3   1822  01090  0447 


Jlfetinif 


R¥  >*"*  T  It  A,  1T&  'iP^L    Tf  i  if'i  ^*t  T  f  %°i  "8"f  T%  Si  T     •<•"**  i'  'i'  T  Y    IrSt 
ICHARD  WASHBURN  CHILD 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


fs 


3   1822  01090  0447 


THE  VANISHING  MEN 


THE 

VANISHING    MEN 


BY 

RICHARD  WASHBURN  CHILD 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  VELVET  BLACK,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 
E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 

681  FIFTH  AVENUE 


COPYRIGHT,  1920, 
BY  E.   P.   BUTTON  &  COMPANY 


Att  Rights  Reserved 


Firtt  printing March.  19SO 

Second  printing April,  1930 

Third  printing June.  1020 


Printed  in  the  United  State*  of  America 


THE  VANISHING   MEN 


HE  had  gone  to  London  the  moment  he  was  out 
of  uniform,  and  he  had  gone  there  for  a  reason 
typical  of  him. 

For  most  Americans  a  single  track  success  is  an 
inspiration  of  life;  there  is  a  raw  meat  satisfaction 
in  hewing  to  the  line  until  some  tree  falls  and  also 
an  instinct  for  playing  the  latest  game.  If  it  is 
money  making,  or  trade,  or  industrialism  or  produc 
tion-efficiency,  the  rank  and  file  go  panting  after  it 
until  some  one  rings  for  the  undertaker.  I  have 
always  thought  that  the  source  of  the  imagination 
which  was  responsible  for  Peter  DeWolfe's  tastes, 
policy  and  conduct  was  most  difficult  to  uncover. 
The  true  sense  of  play,  not  only  applied  to  play  but 
to  all  the  endeavors  of  life,  even  those  which  are 


2  The  Vanishing  Men 

usually  accounted  grim — like  war  and  marriage — is 
a  rare  flower  to  bloom  on  the  American  soil;  it  is 
still  more  rare  a  blossom  to  find  growing  on  a  fam 
ily  tree  rooted,  as  Peter's  was  rooted,  in  a  bed  of 
money  and  only  fertilized  by  that  humdrum  con 
ventional  pretense  of  our  large  cities  which  at  lat 
est  accounts  is  still  giving  many  persons  the  same 
old  pale  glories. 

This  rare  flower  bloomed  in  Peter  and  saved  him 
from  doing  the  commonplaces  with  himself  which 
rich  young  men  who  have  become  orphaned  bach 
elors  usually  do.  It  made  Peter  a  great  deal  more 
like  those  individuals,  rare  enough  even  abroad — 
the  whimsical  Englishman,  the  adventurous  French 
man,  the  humorous  Spaniard  and  the  practical  Rus 
sian,  who,  though  they  be  the  white  crows  of  their 
respective  flocks,  exceed  in  numbers  the  Americans 
who  value  full  living  above  that  rather  uninterest 
ing  and  easy  prize  which  is  called  "Success." 

Peter  took  an  interest  in  living.  The  common 
run  of  bachelors  who  are  provided  amply  with  mil 
lions  accept  the  alternative  of  going  to  hell  or  going 
to  business;  De Wolfe's  imagination  came  to  his 


The  Vanishing  Men  3 

rescue  and  provided  him  with  a  third  choice  which, 
in  his  quiet  way,  he  seized  about  the  time  he  left 
college.  It  was  to  live  for  the  sake  of  living. 

To  some  this  might  have  meant  self-indulgence; 
to  Peter  it  meant  an  indulgence  of  mankind.  To 
some  it  might  have  meant  fads  and  whims,  such  as 
hunting  big  game  from  aeroplanes  at  the  source  of 
the  Nile;  Peter  would  do  that  very  thing  perhaps, 
but  it  was  an  incident  not  half  as  interesting  to  him 
as  an  oil  field  he  developed  in  Texas  or  a  settlement 
house  he  promoted  in  New  York.  He  kept  himself 
as  a  very  neat,  well-cleaned  slate  upon  which  life 
could  write  if  it  wished;  if  it  failed  to  do  so  Peter 
wrote  on  it  a  little  himself — enough  to  keep  him 
self  useful.  The  same  man  who  invented  the  De- 
Wolfe  milimeter  also  set  down  from  time  to  time 
some  charming  verses,  and  the  public  knows  at  least 
one  short  lyric  from  the  "Leaves  of  Argonne" 
which  he  wrote  in  the  hospital  before  his  promotion 
to  Major. 

Dark  skin,  blue  eyes,  thin  sensitive  lips,  the  ap 
pearance  of  one  well  bathed  in  ice  cold  water,  the 
flexible  lean  waist  of  a  good  horseman,  the  long 


4  The  Vanishing  Men 

muscular  fingers  of  a  good  tennis  player  who  had 
not  lost  the  delicacy  of  touch  which  made  him  some 
thing  less  than  a  distinguished  performer  upon  a 
cello — these  were  the  outward  introductions  which 
made  that  particularly  admirable  little  group  of 
British  gentlemen  officers  find  his  acquaintance  so 
quickly. 

Eversby  Benham  of  the  R.  A.  F.  must  bear  the 
blame  for  the  months  in  which  DeWolfe  found  his 
great  adventure  at  a  time  when  to  Peter  adventure 
had  become  dull  beyond  words  and  the  mind-image 
of  himself  sitting  on  a  New  York  park  bench,  sur 
rounded  by  engaging  little  foreign  brats,  listening 
to  a  hurdy-gurdy  in  the  summer  dusk,  was  the  most 
exciting  and  delicious  picture  conjurable  from  his 
resourceful  imagination  of  what  a  wonderful  mo 
ment  of  life  after  a  whirl  with  war  could  be.  For 
it  was  Benham,  who  only  later  went  home  to  the 
office  of  the  Air  Ministry,  and  who  has  since  dis 
tinguished  himself  in  the  development  of  civil-fly 
ing,  who  first  steered  the  young  American  across 
the  path  of  Brena  Selcoss. 

"Are  you  going  back?"  asked  Benham. 


The  Vanishing  Men  5 

"Home,"  said  DeWolfe,  with  an  attempt  to  say 
the  word  without  sentiment. 

"Red  Cross  ladies,  Waacs,  beautiful  high  caste 
Parisiennes  and  even  the  charming  daughter  of  your 
what's-his-name  at  the  bloody  Peace  Conference — 
and  still  a  bachelor!  By  the  by,  DeWolfe,  what 
happened  to  your  lady  with  the  gorgeous  arms  at 
that  flubby  little  cafe  on  the  south  bank  of  the 
Seine?" 

"An  engaging  goddess,"  said  DeWolfe.  "She 
is,  I  believe,  a  petticoat  buyer.  She  tried  to  con 
vert  me  into  the  Methodist  faith.  Those  beautiful 
arms  are  for  the  neck  of  some  Y.  M.  C.  A.  man 
with  glasses  and  a  tickling  cough.  She  borrowed 
thirty  francs  of  me  and  then  went  off  to  see  a 
daughter  of  hers  who  is  driving  an  ambulance  near 
Coblentz." 

"You  are  well  armored,  Peter,"  Benham  had  said, 
gazing  with  a  reflective  and  perhaps  mischievous 
smile  across  the  flat  fields  of  France  with  their 
tilled  squares  and  wisp-armed  trees  and  thin  mist3 
of  dusk.  "By  the  by,  I  say,  doesn't  this  landscape 
remind  one  of  Corot's  paintings?" 


6  The  Vanishing  Men 

DeWolfe  grinned. 

"What  would  make  you  fall  in  love  with  a 
woman?"  asked  Benham. 

"Almost  anything,"  Peter  replied.  "But  that's 
not  the  problem;  the  problem  is  what  will  prevent 
a  man  falling  out?" 

"You're  saying  that  any  woman — that  is,  with 
the  thing  you  Americans  call  a  come-on,  good  or 
bad — may  make  a  man  fall  in  love  with  her?" 

"I  was  saying  that  we  are  all  hypocrites.  Such  a 
woman  would  touch  us  all — affect  any  of  us — me, 
for  instance.  We  are  made  ready  by  a  wise  nature. 
'Stand  by  for  love/  she  says,  and  youth  stands  by, 
Benham.  But  what's  the  use,  if  that's  all?  Life  is 
a  long  pull.  No  dimpled  chin  should  be  allowed  to 
turn  the  tide.  No  discourse  of  brilliance  chattered 
off  like  a  disc  record  in  a  conservatory.  No  nose- 
full  of  the  faint  odor  of  violets  nor  moonlight  on  a 
bare  shoulder  nor  a  rating  of  the  old  man.  That's 
what  I  mean.  That's  why  most  men  marry;  but  I 
am  hardened  by  too  many  inspections  of  dimpled 
chins." 

"From  a  discreet  distance?" 


The  Vanishing  Men  7 

"Exactly." 

"You  want  more  than  that  pull  of  the  moment  or 
the  month." 

"To  make  me  give  up  my  own  quarters  in  New 
York  where  the  sun  comes  in  upon  my  bare  ankles 
and  my  coffee,  and  my  Jap  brings  the  newspaper 
and  the  cigarettes?  I  should  be  glad  to  say  so!" 

"You  should  try  Brena  Selcoss." 

"Who?" 

"Brena  Selcoss." 

"Who  is  she  ?"  asked  Peter  carelessly,  as  he  tried 
his  arm  out  of  its  bandage  sling. 

"You  like  the  name?" 

"I  confess " 

"Of  course — so  many  names  of  women — just  the 
names — give  a  man  a  thrill.  Most  extraordinary! 
She's  an  American,  and " 

He  paused. 

"Well,  what?"  asked  DeWolfe. 

"A  puzzle,"  said  Benham.  "But  then  you  are  not 
interested  in  women." 

"To  tell  the  whole  truth,  they  are  my  only  in 
terest  except  food,"  Peter  said.  "The  devil  of  it  is 


8  The  Vanishing  Men 

that  if  a  man  saw  ten  thousand  of  'em  he  didn't 
want  and  couldn't  love  he'd  always  expect  year  after 
year  until  he  was  ninety  that  the  first  over  the  thou 
sand  would  be  the  one.  Well,  that's  what  leads  us 
on.  We  all  say,  'No,  thank  you/  when  the  dish  is 
passed,  but  we  all  look  to  see  every  last  piece  on 
the  dish  just  the  same." 

"Brena  Selcoss  is  a  friend  of  my  sister,"  said 
Benham.  "I  must  say  she  takes  the  breath  out  of 
me.  It's  that  queer  combination  of  beautiful  fresh 
youth  with  the  flavor  of  all  the  guile  and  conspiracy 
of  the  ages.  She's  a  Saint  Cecilia  or  a  Lucrezia 
Borgia.  But  that's  not  bothering  my  mother." 

"What  bothers  her?" 

"Funny  thing.  We  don't  know  who  she  is.  From 
Texas,  I  believe.  With  some  money.  But  why 
does  a  girl  from  the  United  States  come  down  to 
Beconshire  Heath  and  buy  a  curate's  cottage  next 
to  our  place  and  live  in  a  garden  and  stay  out  of 
London  and  read  lying  flat  on  the  grass  and  see  no 
body  and  evade  all  questions?  And  the  look  in  her 
eyes !  I  didn't  see  it  at  first  because  I  was  in  a  funk 
at  the  eyes  themselves." 


The  Vanishing  Men  9 

"What  look?"  asked  DeWolfe  in  the  hush. 

"Fear,"  said  Benham. 

"Fear?" 

"Yes,  fear.  And  besides  there  is  something 
about  her  that  tells  a  person  that  she  is  waiting — 
marking  time — treading  water — staring  out  over 
life — just  like  a  watcher  on  the  shore  stares  out 
across  the  empty  sea." 

"Maybe  she's  thinking  of  an  ice  cream  soda." 

"There's  nothing  of  that  kind  of  thing  in  her," 
the  British  officer  replied  with  positiveness.  "Your 
ice  cream  soda  and  millinery  and  looking-glass  lady 
has  a  personality  of  a  pink  color.  Brena  Selcoss  is 
the  color  of  firelight  on  the  walls  of  an  old  temple." 

"You  might  go  on  to  say  that  she  gives  the  im 
pression  of  an  Inca  princess.  Some  dried  mummy 
from  the  sands  of  a  prehistoric  citadel.  Bathed  in 
some  magic  liquid,  her  limbs  expanded  to  the  lovely 
contour  of  girlhood,  her  face  warmed  with  a  re 
newed  coursing  of  spirited  blood." 

"You've  seen  her!"  exclaimed  Benham. 

"My  dear  fellow,  I've  never  seen  her;  but  I  con- 


io  The  Vanishing  Men 

fess  that  as  you  talk  about  her  I  feel  a  little  as  if 
I  had  known  her — long  ago." 

Benham  said,  "Perhaps  you  could  lift  the 
cover " 

He  stopped  suddenly. 

"And  I'd  like  to  have  you  meet  Muriel  too.  She's 
a  very  decent  sort  of  sister.  I've  a  mind  to  give 
you  a  letter  to  my  mother  and  send  you  over  the 
Channel  to  loaf  around  in  flannels  at  our  place  in 
the  country." 

"I'm  leaving  Brest  to-morrow  night  on  a  trans 
port.  Sorry." 

"Oh." 

"Well,  I  said  nothing  about  it." 

"Afraid  of  farewell  dinners?" 

Peter  smiled. 

"Home,"  said  he.  "Bring  your  sister  over  to 
America.  She'll  probably  think  it  a  jolly  little  un 
finished  country." 

Benham  clasped  De Wolfe's  hand  and  yawned;  he 
had  seen  the  American  covered  from  head  to  foot 
with  blood  out  of  his  own  arteries  when  Peter  had 

b 

brought  him  in  with  the  aid  of  an  artillery  horse. 


The  Vanishing  Men  n 

It  was  an  intimacy  not  to  be  befouled  with  demon 
strations. 

"So  long,"  said  DeWolfe. 

He  climbed  down  from  the  broken  wall  of  the 
house  where  the  Englishman  had  been  billeted  and 
with  a  nod  of  farewell  walked  away,  leaving  Ben- 
ham  perched  up  there — a  black  figure  as  if  cut  out 
of  black  cardboard  pasted  on  the  sunset  glories  of 
the  sky-line. 

He  walked  a  hundred  paces  and  stopped.  He 
looked  at  a  group  of  peasant  children  bringing  in 
fagots,  but  laughing  and  jostling  each  other  as  if 
it  were  a  game.  Childhood  had  been  untouched. 
In  one  of  the  little  rubble  and  plaster  sheds  a  new 
born  calf  was  bawling,  and  yet  in  Paris,  as  he  re 
flected,  serious  men  were  discussing  the  future  of 
the  world  exactly  as  if  they  could  touch  or  affect 
its  fundamental  nature. 

He  walked  on.  The  trees  trained  against  the 
high  wall  spread  their  branches  like  fans,  edged  at 
the  tips  with  the  pink  blossoms  of  a  new  year, 
symbolic  of  the  eternal  round  of  promise,  fruit  and 
decay. 


12  The  Vanishing  Men 

"It  goes  so  soon,"  said  DeWolfe  aloud,  and  this 
voice  which  spoke  was  just  as  if  some  old  friend 
had  given  him  counsel  as  they  strolled  together  in 
the  dusk.  He  turned. 

The  Englishman  waved  to  him  from  the  wall  and 
held  one  arm  aloft  in  a  gesture  of  farewell;  Peter 
could  see  every  finger  on  his  hand  as  if  they  all 
were  painted  in  sepia  on  the  velvety  gold  of  the  sky. 

"By  the  by,"  called  Benham,  "the  strange  lady  is 
half  a  Greek.  J  say!  Can  you  hear?  Her  father 
was  a  banished  patriot — a  fighting  professor  of 
chemistry  or  something." 

Peter  smiled  and  waved  his  hand.  He  turned  the 
corner  of  the  wall  and  stepped  into  the  cobbled 
street  where  the  endless  wagons  of  some  French 
artillery  maneuver  were  rumbling  deeper  into  the 
ruts  of  War  worn  in  the  ancient  stones. 

Only  at  nine  that  evening  did  he  hear  more.  Ben- 
ham  called  him  by  the  service  wire  of  the  Signal 
Corps. 

"Saying  good-by,  that's  all,"  said  the  English 
man  lying  glibly.  "Good  luck.  And  I  forgot  to 
say  that  her  mother  was  Irish." 


The  Vanishing  Men  13 

"Send  me  that  letter  to  your  family  care  of  the 
American  port  officer  at  Boulogne,"  said  Peter 
calmly  after  a  moment  in  which  Benham  wondered 
whether  the  line  had  been  cut  off.  "I'm  off  for 
England  to-morrow." 

He  put  his  cigarette  down  and  allowed  it  to  burn 
the  edge  of  the  table,  staring  at  the  wall  with  its 
maps  and  blue-prints,  his  eyes  full  of  wonder. 

This  explains,  in  part,  why  the  reason  for  his 
going  to  London  was  typical  of  Peter  DeWolfe. 


II 

MURIEL  BENHAM  was  savagely  a  woman.  She 
conceived  woman  as  a  species  as  distinct  from  males 
as  flora  is  distinct  from  fauna.  The  acquisition  by 
women  of  the  right  to  vote  had  been  the  occasion 
for  mourning,  as  Peter  found  out  before  Mrs. 
Austin  Benham  had  beamed  through  two  meals  first 
upon  her  guest  and  then  upon  her  lovely  daughter. 

The  widow  of  Austin,  as  De Wolfe  discovered 
after  a  week  of  agreeable  neglect  of  the  cal 
endar,  was  a  true  beamer.  She  did  not  beam  with 
the  insincere  beam  of  affectation,  but  with  the  beam 
of  an  expansive  nature  oozing  good  will  and  demon- 
strativeness  through  the  crevices  it  could  find  in  the 
walls  of  a  life  which  was  like  a  vessel  of  conven 
tionality,  containing,  according  to  all  the  traditions 
of  her  husband's  family,  a  liquor  of  precious  quality, 
not  to  be  spent  freely.  She  believed  in  new  things 
and  in  a  new  world,  but  she  beamed  upon  Muriel 
not  because  she  agreed  with  her  but  because,  not 

14 


The  Vanishing  Men  15 

daring  to  voice  an  opinion,  she  could  still  love  her 
daughter  for  being  so  healthy  and  so  irreproachable. 

Muriel  considered  herself  as  dedicated  by  duty 
and  adaptability  to  being  a  woman,  and  being  a 
woman  meant  that  her  brown  hair  must  be  made  at 
tractive  and  stable  for  tennis — a  game  which  she 
executed  with  a  good  deal  of  dash,  in  a  costume  de 
signed  to  keep  freckles  off  a  milk  white  skin.  Even 
her  forearms  were  covered  in  the  game  she  took 
from  De Wolfe,  who  made  rather  a  botch  of  his  un- 
practiced  play,  because  just  as  it  was  a  womanly 
woman's  duty  to  be  well  exercised  and  in  fine  con 
dition  for  the  market,  so  also  was  it  her  duty  to 
be  milk  white  in  an  evening  dress.  The  same 
thought  made  her  appear  before  Peter  in  the  hedge- 
walled  garden  before  breakfast  clad  in  a  part  wispy 
and  part  fluffy  gown  with  a  basket  of  roses  hung  on 
one  elbow  and  flower  scissors  in  the  other  hand. 

"You  do  all  things  so  well,"  said  Peter  with  a 
great  delight  filling  his  being.  "There  is  a  thor 
oughness  in  your  method  which  positively  upsets 
me.  I  looked  at  the  library  in  your  study  and  as 
far  as  I  can  see  you  have  spent  your  twenty  years 


16  The  Vanishing  Men 

collecting,  among  others,  books  on  how  to  do  things 
— how  to  ride  a  horse,  how  to  play  golf,  how  to 
knit,  how  to  cast  a  fly,  how  to  speak  Italian,  how 
to  grow  roses  and  who  knows  what  else." 

The  English  girl  was  sincerely  grateful  to  Peter. 
She  said,  "To  know  the  way,  to  practice  the  meth 
ods — these  are  the  sure  steps  toward  results;  but 
you  must  not  think  I  take  myself  too  seriously,  as 
my  brother  probably  told  you.  I  think  it  is  all  as 
nothing  compared  to  the  skill  of  being  a  woman — 
a  fit  woman — a  woman  whose  one  aim  is  to  be  a 
woman." 

"You  have  attained  it,"  said  Peter,  a  little  light 
dancing  in  his  eyes  under  his  heavy  brows  as  fire 
flies  sparkle  behind  a  hedge. 

The  girl  tossed  the  ball  up  and  caught  it  in  her 
white  skirt  spread  from  knee  to  knee  as  she  sat 
cross-legged  upon  the  edge  of  the  Benhams'  lawn. 
This  lawn  began  again  after  the  interruption  of  the 
square  of  tennis  court  and  rolled  gently  down  to  a 
line  of  trees  at  the  bottom  of  the  hill  that  half 
hides  the  little  town  of  Becon  with  its  nestling  red 
brick  houses  with  their  chimney  pots  and  roofs 


The  Vanishing  Men  17 

tempered  by  the  smoke  of  coals  on  home  fires.  They 
lived  peaceably  together  without  any  bold  asser 
tions  of  individuality,  none  of  them  doing  any  out 
rage  to  the  countryside,  as  Peter,  contrasting  it  with 
an  American  town,  had  said.  Beyond  the  village 
were  the  chalk  downs  where  grass  was  light  green 
and  the  heather  a  deeper  color,  and  narrow  roads 
were  as  white  as  marks  of  crayon,  and  trees  stand 
ing  alone  were  like  feathery  plumes  stuck  here  and 
there  into  the  rolling  country  by  some  giant  hand. 
Somewhere,  still  further  on,  was  the  sea  into  which 
the  bright  sky  fell  like  a  blue  back  curtain  flecked 
with  clouds  of  feathery  white. 

Peter,  with  half-closed  eyes,  gazed  out  across  this 
magnificence  of  quiet  space  toward  the  distant  back 
bone  of  a  chalk  ridge  where  ancient  Britons  once 
drove  their  cattle  into  caves  and  Druid  priests  had 
once  held  solemn  rites.  He  was  quite  unconscious 
of  Muriel's  attention  fixed  upon  him  somewhat  as 
a  faithful  dog  watches  a  master;  he  had  been  in 
many  of  his  own  dreams  in  these  ten  days  and 
might  well  be  forgiven  for  failing  to  notice  that 
something  of  violence  was  going  on  within  this 


i8  The  Vanishing  Men 

English  girl  whose  outlines,  like  those  of  a  volcano, 
were  still  clear  and  cold  against  the  sky,  exposing 
nothing  of  the  fires  and  steam  which  may  blow  their 
surroundings  into  fragments. 

The  most  that  Muriel  had  ever  said  was  that 
Peter  was  one  of  the  "nice  Americans,"  a  patroniz 
ing  compliment  which  had  made  him  tell  the  girl 
and  her  mother  that  he  was  gratified  at  that  judg 
ment  expressed  by  "the  better  type  of  English."  He 
did  not  know  that  by  the  processes  within  the  Ben- 
ham  sister's  lovely  head,  she  had  weighed  carefully 
his  physical  appearance,  noting  his  high  bronzed 
forehead,  his  straight  nose,  his  lean  hard  cheeks  and 
the  thin  judicial  lips  which  had  been  an  inheritance 
of  the  family  ever  since  Justice  DeWolfe  had  been 
painted  by  Copley.  She  had  judged  him  as  one 
would  judge  an  animal,  and  satisfied,  had  methodi 
cally  passed  on  to  his  clothes. 

Peter's  clothes  are  famous  for  their  charming  in 
correctness.  No  one  quite  knows  how  he  succeeds 
in  expressing  through  some  expensively  fashionable 
and  unimaginative  tailor  so  much  of  his  own  brand 
of  distinction  in  dress.  Evening  clothes  or  bath- 


The  Vanishing  Men  19 

wrap,  major's  uniform  or  lounging  flannels,  it  is 
always  the  same;  Peter's  clothes  and  Peter  are  one. 
An  envious  broker  in  New  York  named  Moore  once 
said  that  Peter's  clothes  even  expressed  Peter's 
moods — they  could  be  limp,  soft  and  contented  in 
his  idleness ;  they  could  stiffen  into  fine  dignity  with 
a  turn  of  his  thought.  Muriel's  father  had  given 
attention  to  clothes;  the  hunter's-pink  riding  coat 
that  still  hangs  in  the  hall  closet  in  Beconshire 
Heath  reminds  his  successors  of  the  dominant, 
rare  roast  beef  personality  of  Sir  Austin.  His 
daughter,  like  other  women  who  are  in  the  profes 
sion  of  being  women,  gave  importance  to  the  deco 
rative  qualities  of  a  male;  she  only  forgot  about 
Peter's  face  and  figure  and  clothes  when  they  had 
been  swallowed  by  his  complete  whole — a  whole 
which  defied  her  methodical  judgment  and  made  her 
eyes  swim  and  began  to  turn  within  her  heart  and 
body  the  elementary  machinery  that  two  hundred 
years  of  Benham  tradition  had  kept  locked  in 
neutral. 

"Peter,  I  saw  you  before  breakfast,"  she  said. 
"From  my  window." 


20 


The  Vanishing  Men 


^e  ieaneso  c  os  n  mOrn^S? 

raoftheIavenLthiehr    CBrhthefaint 
a  beaming  face,  sprinkled  in  th,7  '  W"h 

"Because  I  was  vvait.n  "'    She  said- 

ing  „  '"S  to  see  what  you  were  ^ 


was  I  doing?"  said  Pefer 
(  The  telescope-father's  telescope" 


-re  the 

house  and  even  qua  n       T  ^  °f  the  °'d 
on  at  breakfast  t    t  rf  ?t      ^  CUpS  Which 
not  to  see  the.     H  ^  C°me  (°  Becon- 

not  chosen  c  n,^  ^^  '"at  if  they 
the  rather  stiff  !  ^  '"  ac1uaint«ce  other 
had  come 
or 


The  Vanishing  Men  21 

the  wine  cellar,  he  could  not  very  well  mention  this 
acquaintance.  Furthermore  he  had  begun  to  feel  that 
Muriel  in  some  strange  manner  of  her  own  had 
created  an  atmosphere  of  a  proprietress  without  any 
other  intimacy  than  calling  him  Peter  and,  upon  one 
occasion,  dressing  a  cut  of  a  hawthorn  on  the  back 
of  his  hand  with  a  peculiar  tenderness  mixed  with 
all  the  care  of  procedure  that  one  can  find  in 
"What  to  Do  in  an  Emergency."  He  shrank  from 
making  the  one  inquiry  he  would  have  wished  to 
make. 

He  now  had  a  chance  to  make  this  inquiry,  be 
cause  Muriel  said,  "You  were  standing  there  under 
that  beech  tree.  I  thought " 

"What  did  you  think?" 

"That  you  were  looking  through  the  glass  across 
the  fields  toward  that  place  under  the  big  trees — the 
place  we  call  the  Curate's  because  one  used  to  live 
there." 

Peter  might  have  spoken  then  to  ask  who  now 
occupied  the  little  gabled  house  with  its  guardian 
trees.  It  was  the  opportunity  to  hear  a  name  he 
had  not  heard  since  he  had  heard  it  from  Colonel 


22  The  Vanishing  Men 

Benham's  lips;  Peter's  characteristic  perversity  that 
often  made  him  allow  life  to  set  its  own  pace  and 
bring  events  at  its  own  whim,  added  at  this  moment 
to  his  disinclination  to  disclose  one  of  his  reasons 
for  idling  under  the  Benhams'  roof.  It  prevented 
him  from  speaking.  The  sun  was  warm,  there  was 
a  fatalistic  assurance  that  he  would  hear  the  name 
soon  enough,  and  there  was  the  possibility  that  a 
look  of  pain  would  come  into  Muriel's  face  and  he 
would  hurt  a  girl  for  whom  he  had  acquired  a  good 
natured,  companionable  and  almost  paternal  af 
fection. 

He  only  smiled,  and  Muriel's  pink  fingers  being 
near  upon  the  grass,  he  touched  them  lightly.  After 
a  long  pause,  he  said,  "I  was  looking  around  the 
country." 

"I  do  not  believe  you,"  the  girl  said,  jumping  up 
with  startling  suddenness. 

"Where  are  you  going?"  he  asked. 

"Into  the  house.    I  have  a — headache." 

She  had  often  insisted  that  she  never  had  head 
aches,  as  if  not  having  headaches  was  a  part  of  a 
proper  program  for  a  woman  who  intends  to  marry 


The  Vanishing  Men  23 

correctly,  have  children  correctly  and  be  correctly 
buried  with  a  correct  husband's  tears.  Perhaps  this 
came  into  her  mind,  for  at  the  vine-covered  portico 
she  turned,  put  her  arm  against  one  of  the  ancient 
stone  pillars  and,  making  a  pretty  picture  with  her 
high  color  and  her  lean  young  body,  she  called  out, 
"Do  you  want  a  walk  this  afternoon — to  Besman 
Wood?" 

Peter  nodded  his  assent  vigorously,  and  when  she 
ran  into  the  house  he  threw  himself  back  into  the 
grass  and  through  half -closed  eyelids  watched  the 
ever-changing  patterns  in  cottony  clouds  and  the 
flight  of  wheeling  martins. 

Muriel  began  that  afternoon  walk  with  great 
gayety  of  spirits,  as  if,  perhaps,  she  had  found  a 
triumph  over  some  difficulty,  a  victory  at  the  end  of 
twenty-one  years  of  preparation  for  victory.  As 
soon  as  they  had  struck  off  across  the  downs  she 
threw  her  arms  toward  the  sky  and  sang  into  the 
wind  an  old  hunting  song  of  quaint  and  engaging 
melody. 

"Let's  learn  the  song  together,"  she  said  to  Peter. 
"Look  over  there  on  the  edge  of  the  horizon.  That 


24  The  Vanishing  Men 

square  tower.  That's  Saint  Dunstan's — the  very 
tower  in  which  the  fox  sought  sanctuary  in  the 
song — the  old  song,  written  six  hundred  years  ago, 
they  say." 

Peter,  with  his  usual  adaptability,  acquired  both 
words  and  music.  He  sang.  He  danced  upon  the 
rolling  green  plain.  And  at  last  seizing  Muriel's 
waist  around  the  belt  of  her  sporting  coat,  he  swung 
her  almost  off  her  feet  and  together  they  whirled 
merrily — two  tiny  tops  spinning  upon  the  vast  ex 
panse.  When  they  stopped,  the  girl,  almost  dizzy, 
and  breathless,  clung  for  a  moment  to  his  coat  and 
looked  up  into  Peter's  eyes.  He  could  feel  her 
warm  breath  upon  his  chin. 

Peter  was  not  lacking  in  perception;  he  knew  at 
once  that  his  visit  at  the  Benhams'  must  come  to  an 
end.  All  the  cold  assurance  in  Muriel's  face,  all  the 
steady,  stable  English  look  had  gone.  No  refusal  of 
hers  to  vote  or  smoke  a  cigarette  or  adopt  an  article 
of  clothing  which  in  any  way  might  have  unsexed 
her  could  have  proclaimed  her  as  a  woman  rather 
than  as  a  companionable  playmate  as  completely  as 


The  Vanishing  Men  25 

did  this  searching,  half -troubled,  hungry  look  in  her 
swimming,  brimming  eyes. 

"Come  on  now,"  he  said  as  if  to  a  private  soldier 
who  had  disobeyed  orders.  "Let's  walk.  Let's  walk 
hard  and  fast  and  long." 

He  was  wondering  now  whether  he  had  made  his 
journey  to  Beconshire  in  vain,  whether  indeed  his 
willingness  to  solve  the  puzzle  that  Benham  had  told 
him  was  waiting  for  him  there  had  not  been  a  piece 
of  folly  leading  to  nothing.  When  he  and  the  girl 
had  dipped  down  the  slope  into  the  single  track  path 
that  led  across  the  moor  he  nearly  walked  blindly 
into  the  silver  stream  through  the  rushes  that  grew 
at  the  water's  edge. 

"You  are  not  vexed?"  asked  Miss  Benham  in 
vitingly. 

"Vexed!"  exclaimed  DeWolfe.  "With  you?  God 
bless  you,  dear,  no!" 

She  looked  up  at  him  gratefully,  watching  him 
as  she  walked  by  his  side  a  good  deal  as  a  setter 
might  look  up  to  catch  a  glance  of  apprgval  from  a 
man.  Peter  expected  no  storm  from  her.  He  knew 
he  must  pack  up  his  things  and  go  back  to  London. 


26  The  Vanishing  Men 

This  was  only  fair  to  Benham  and  certainly  fair  to 
Benham's  sister  who  had  let  herself  imagine  so 
much  from  an  acquaintance  with  a  stray  American 
who  inwardly  believed  that  to  live  a  lifetime  of 
Muriel's  program  of  days  and  years  would  be  a 
close  second  to  a  term  in  jail  or  to  having  a  berth 
in  a  Wall  Street  broker's  office.  He  supposed,  how 
ever,  that  if  not  actually,  at  least  metaphorically 
Muriel  had  read  a  book  on  "How  to  Keep  One's 
Balance."  He  did  not  figure  upon  the  explosive 
forces  which  can  be  generated  in  a  conservative 
family,  as  if  occasionally  the  fundamentals  of  man 
kind  liked  to  show  their  half-concealed  existence  of 
which  all  are  aware,  each  for  himself,  but  never  as 
to  our  armored  neighbor.  Muriel,  in  fact,  was  just 
the  person  the  fundamental  human  forces  would 
pick  out  to  give  a  glorious  exhibition  of  blowing  up 
the  crusts  of  restraint.  Peter,  like  most  of  us,  had 
heard  a  slight  crack  in  her  cover,  but  like  most  of 
us  he  had  endless  faith  in  the  strength  of  habit  and 
conventions. 

The    depression   which    fell    upon    the    girl,    as 
if   a   shadow   cast   by   the   dusk,   gathering   about 


The  Vanishing  Men  27 

them  as  they  came  back  from  Saint  Dunstan's 
tower  after  ten  miles  in  the  wind,  gave  no  warning 
of  crisis  to  him.  And  certainly  he  was  under  no 
obligation  to  foresee  that  which  the  night  would 
bring  forth. 

At  dinner  he  discovered  that  he  could  talk  to 
Mrs.  Benham ;  to  his  astonishment  he  found  that  be 
hind  her  beam  there  were  a  great  many  years  of 
orderly  thinking  whose  product,  not  consumed  by 
her  family,  had  been  put  up  onto  the  shelf  in  many 
careful  layers  like  bolts  of  cloth  with  an  unfa^hioji- 
able  pattern.  It  was  almost  worth  while  to  have 
Muriel  so  silent ;  it  was  almost  a  relief  to  turn  away 
from  her  long  Byrne-Jones  face  with  its  sensitive 
lips  contrasting  with  her  stern  eyes  and  be  beamed 
upon  sunnily  by  the  broad  strong  face  of  her  mother. 
Peter  took  a  delight  in  making  this  beam  expand 
into  a  laugh.  He  was  never  so  whimsical.  Each 
time  he  leaned  forward  toward  the  white-haired 
widow  who,  with  her  middle-Victorian  figure, 
weighed  at  least  two  hundred  pounds,  Muriel 
stared  at  her  mother  with  a  look  which  might  have 
been  the  expression  of  jealousy. 


28  The  Vanishing  Men 

Peter,  as  he  chatted  with  Mrs.  Benham,  faced 
the  long  French  windows  in  a  curved  bay  at  the 
end  of  the  dining-room.  The  floor  was  covered 
with  ferns  and  flowery  plants  in  pots,  giving  forth 
to  the  room  at  all  meals  that  smell  of  warm  dark 
earth  which  fills  greenhouses;  but  just  outside  the 
reflection  of  his  own  dinner  coat  on  the  long  panes 
of  the  doors,  there  was  the  blue  stone  driveway  of 
the  house  and  the  path  to  the  side  door.  Upon  this 
path  Peter  thought  he  had  seen  a  flash  of  white. 
It  might  have  been  a  reflection  of  his  own  white 
linen;  he  had  only  seen  this  flick  of  movement  out 
of  the  corner  of  his  eye  as  he  put  down  his  gilt 
coffee  cup. 

"What  did  you  see?"  asked  Muriel  suddenly. 

"I?  Why  I  thought  I  saw  a  white  spot  in  the 
dark  out  there — like  a  person's  face." 

Muriel  stiffened.  "I  don't  know  who  it  could 
be,"  she  said.  "Lucy,  turn  on  the  light  outside  the 
North  door." 

Peter  smiled,  but  only  because  he  had  thought  of 
how  red  English  maids  could  be — just  as  red  as 
valets  were  white. 


The  Vanishing  Men  29 

The  smile  disappeared  the  moment  the  electric 
lamp  above  the  outer  door  just  behind  the  French 
windows  threw  down  its  light  like  an  overturned 
bucket  of  yellow  liquid.  A  woman  was  standing 
there,  and  Peter  believed  that  as  she  had  stood  in 
the  dark,  unseen,  she  had  been  looking  straight  into 
his  face.  She  wore  no  hat  and  her  hair  piled  up  in 
immense  snake-like  coils  was  the  color  of  certain 
frost-turned  leaves  of  Autumn  which  are  neither 
red  nor  gold,  but  both  colors  at  once. 

"Her  Irish  mother!"  he  almost  said  aloud.  He 
knew  at  once  who  she  was.  He  knew  by  her  hair 
and  her  great  dark  eyes  in  which,  even  from  a  dis 
tance,  there  appeared  the  expectancy  or  fear  de 
scribed  by  young  Benham.  The  British  officer  had 
not  overdrawn  her  beauty.  There  was  a  still 
grandeur  about  it,  a  permanence,  a  thing  making  it 
awful  as  well  as  alluring;  it  was  like  the  beauty  of 
Grecian  sculpture  dug  from  the  dust  and  trans 
formed  by  miracle  into  living  warmth  glowing 
through  a  skin  which  compared  to  Muriel's  fine  cold 
white  was  as  heavy  cream  is  to  skimmed  milk. 


3O  The  Vanishing  Men 

She  stood  in  the  posture  which  Peter  learned  later 
to  know  was  characteristic — a  posture  of  one  who 
waits  with  resignation.  For  what  ?  Heaven  knows. 
Perhaps  for  a  reincarnation  into  a  life  less  troubled, 
less  besmirched  with  small  affairs. 

That  she  wore  a  white  draped  gown  over  which 
a  wrap  of  flame  color  hung  from  her  half  bare 
shoulders  DeWolfe  did  not  notice.  She  was  one 
who  cannot  be  described  in  detail,  and  her  clothes 
made  no  impress  though  their  illuminated  colors  and 
contrast  in  any  other  case  might  have  left  a  vivid 
picture.  One  never  saw  her  except  as  a  whole — a 
woman  too  short  of  stature,  if  one  measured,  but 
the  height  of  a  goddess  if  one  only  looked;  a  girl 
whose  face,  though  capable  of  a  great  range  of  ex 
pression,  nevertheless  changed  its  moods  as  slowly 
as  the  clouds  in  the  sky  change  their  contours;  a 
human  being  whose  personality  belonged,  it  ap 
peared,  to  the  kind  of  personalities  which  are  found 
usually  only  in  a  deep  forest,  or  belong  to  a  pinna 
cled  mountain  range.  Any  detail  was  nothing. 

"She  has  come  to  see  my  mother,"  said  Muriel. 


The  Vanishing  Men  31 

"So  she  has!"  admitted  Mrs.  Benham,  beaming 
out  through  the  window. 

"I  might  have  known  who  it  was.  I  heard  a  high- 
powered  car.  But  she  doesn't  like  to  be  driven  al 
most  into  our  dining-room,  so  she  stopped  on  the 
South  Wing.  Let's  go  into  father's  den,  Peter. 
Bring  the  cigars  in  there,  Lucy." 

No  protest  appeared  possible.  Mrs.  Benham  had 
beamed  and  nodded,  and  the  American  could  not 
very  graciously  say,  "Oh,  no.  I  want  to  stay." 

He  turned  once  as  he  left  the  dining-room.  The 
woman  outside  was  still  waiting  at  the  door  for 
Mrs.  Benham  to  waddle  to  the  latch,  the  waterfall 
of  light  still  covering  her,  still  looking  in,  apparently 
at  Peter,  and  with  a  smile  and  warmth  thrown  to 
ward  him  like  a  message  from  her  great  dark  eyes. 

He  could  not  wipe  away  the  impression  of  that 
look.  In  it  there  had  been  a  call,  an  understanding, 
a  password,  a  magic  formula.  To  shake  it  off  he 
walked  nervously  about  Sir  Austin's  old  study, 
stopping  before  the  photographs  of  members  of  the 
House  of  Commons  who  had  been  Benham's 
friends,  but  were  like  the  ends  of  so  many  empty 


32  The  Vanishing  Men 

spools  to  Peter's  eyes  at  this  moment.  He  read  an 
inscription  on  a  portrait  of  General  Wolseley,  he 
touched  an  ivory  idol  from  Benares. 

"Let's  light  the  fire,"  suggested  Muriel  in  a  weak 
and  trembling  voice. 

"All  right,"  said  Peter,  and  struck  a  match. 

He  did  not  smoke. 

"Why  not?"  asked  the  girl. 

"I  have  a — headache,"  he  said  with  a  laugh. 

"Come  here  then.  Lie  down  on  father's  sofa.  I 
don't  mind.  Be  comfortable,  Peter." 

He  stretched  out  upon  the  springs  bent  and  sagged 
by  years  of  pressure  of  the  fox-hunting  banker's 
solid  weight,  and  closed  his  eyes. 

Muriel,  who  had  drawn  up  a  stool,  sat  down  upon 
it,  staring  into  the  firelight.  There  in  the  study  be 
hind  the  heavy  door  which  she  had  closed,  the  two 
seemed  suddenly  very  remote. 

"I  had  a  wonderful  time — this  afternoon,"  she 
said  in  a  tense  and  trembling  voice  which  made  a 
struggle  to  appear  normal. 

"Good!"  said  DeWolfe. 

Her  hand  moved  timidly  forth  and  her  soft  fin- 


The  Vanishing  Men  33 

gers  touched  his  forehead,  brushing  back  the  hair. 

Peter  closed  his  eyes. 

She  leaned  over  quietly  and  with  a  little  cry 
hardly  audible  pressed  her  lips  to  his. 

He  knew  what  had  happened — the  real  Muriel 
had  come  up  through  layer  on  layer  of  tradition, 
training,  pride,  habit,  restraint.  He  only  was  con 
fused  by  his  own  stupidity  in  allowing  this  to  hap 
pen. 

He  sprang  up. 

"I  never  did  that  before.  I  never — by  any  one," 
she  said  clenching  her  hands. 

"Oh,  I  say,  I'm  sorry "  he  began. 

"Sorry!"  she  said. 

"Of  course,"  he  replied  with  unnecessary  cold 
ness.  "Of  course  I'm  sorry.  I've  allowed  you  to 
think " 

Muriel's  eyes  were  wide  and  blazing.  She 
threw  her  clenched  hands  apart  until  her  arms  were 
outstretched  to  their  utmost.  The  firelight  was  upon 
her  face  and  Peter  could  see  elementary  passions 
enough  upon  it. 

"You  needn't  say  more,"  she  almost  screamed,  so 


34  The  Vanishing  Men 

that  suddenly  Peter  had  a  great  distaste  for  the  ex 
posure  of  things  he  did  not  know  had  lived  in  her. 
"You  needn't  say  more  because  I  know." 


"Knojfjr  said  Peter  in  a  low  tone,  as  if  inviting 

•i  -v 

her  to  spelk  more  quietly. 

"Yes — know.  It's  her!"  she  said,  pointing  toward 
the  wall  where  the  deer's  heads  were  hung.  "I 
know  it's  my  brother  Eversby.  He  told  you  about 
her.  That's  why  you  came.  That's  what  you've 
been  thinking  about.  My  brother  was  a  fool  1" 

Peter  raised  his  hand. 

"I  kissed  you  and  I'm  glad,"  she  went  on  furious 
ly.  "Yes,  I  am.  I'm  glad.  It  has  brought  out  the 
truth.  I  never  did  it  before.  I'm  glad.  The 
truth." 

"Yes,"  said  Peter  sternly.  "It  has  brought  out  the 
truth." 

"You  came  here  to  see  her.  I  know.  I  guessed. 
I  knew  Eversby  told  you  about  her,  but  you  never 
asked.  And  I  knew  why.  I  didn't  want  to  know. 
I  wanted " 

"I'm  sorry,"  Peter  said  again. 


The  Vanishing  Men  35 

The  girl  came  on  several  paces  and  leaned  for 
ward  toward  him. 

"For  God's  sake,  Peter,  keep  away  from  her.  She 
might  like  you.  Of  course  she'd  like  you.  And  if 
she  liked  you " 

"What  do  you  mean?"  he  said. 

"I  know.  I  can't  tell.  It's  a  matter  of  honor,  a 
matter  of  confidence — her  confidence — something  I 
learned.  I  wish  I  didn't  know.  But  I  warn  you." 

She  moved  toward  the  door. 

"Wait  a  moment,"  he  said. 

"No.  I  want  to  go.  I  hate  you  now,  Peter.  Yes, 
I  do.  It  has  been  awful  enough.  I  never  want  to 
see  you  again.  If  you  will  only  go  while  I  hate 
you!" 

"Of  course,"  he  said. 

"But  she  is " 

Muriel  stopped  aghast. 

"Well?"  he  asked. 

"I  can't  tell  you.  But  I  warn  you.  It  is  too  awful 

to  believe.  If  she  takes  you  in,  you  will •  This 

is  all  I  can  tell." 

"What?" 


36  The  Vanishing  Men 

"Vanish,"  she  whispered,  " — like  the  others." 

The  door  closed  after  her. 

"Too  late  to  go  to  London  to-night,"  he  said, 
looking  at  his  watch.  He  listened  for  a  moment. 
There  was  rain  upon  the  window  panes.  "Vanish  ? 
Vanish — like  the  others?  Oh,  it's  absurd.  A  piece 
of  jealous  outburst  Vanish?  Nonsense!" 


Ill 

THE  name  of  Peter  DeWolfe,  U.  S.  A.,  was  upon 
the  register  of  the  Carleton  Hotel  written  in  a  hand 
purposely  scrawled  and  blotched  to  prevent  any  one 
in  the  flux  of  diplomats,  army  officers,  correspond 
ents  and  gentlemen  adventurers,  the  classes  from 
which  this  rich  New  York  bachelor  drew  a  large  and 
almost  affectionate  acquaintance,  from  bellowing 
through  his  door  to  come  down  to  the  bar. 

He  was  waiting  for  a  steamer  that  had  made  up 
her  mind  frequently  not  to  leave  Liverpool  for  an 
other  five  days.  Two  nights  he  had  spent  already  in 
London  where,  if  he  had  wished,  he  might  have 
dined  at  at  least  one  of  half  a  dozen  recognized 
homes,  had  luncheons  with  a  Russian  ex-ambassa 
dor  or  Tommy  Caminthorn  of  the  War  Office  or 
Boleby  Broke,  the  critic  who  writes  the  reviews  for 
the  International  Gazette,  or  taken  breakfast  with 
Mrs.  Holderee  Rabb,  the  widow  of  a  certain  Maha 
rajah's  son  who  had  gone  wrong  at  Oxford.  He 

37 


38  The  Vanishing  Men 

had  an  inclination,  however,  to  write  verses  and 
wander  by  himself  through  the  naughty  jam  of  sol 
diers  and  yellow-haired  girls  in  Leicester  Square  and 
the  Circus.  He  ate  his  meals  in  lonely  state. 

Unfortunately  the  unpleasant  flavor  which  had  at 
tached  itself  to  the  memory  of  his  visit  to  Becon- 
shire  Heath  still  clung.  He  could  see  Lady  Ben- 
ham — that  good  old  soul  who  had  insisted  that  she 
never  be  addressed  by  her  title — beaming  at  him  as 
she  told  him  how  sorry  she  was  that  business  had 
called  him  away  so  suddenly.  He  felt  guilty  of  the 
polite  lie  he  had  told  to  make  his  exit  from  the  lives 
of  the  Benhams.  He  could  see  Muriel's  cold,  hard 
expression  when,  having  pressed  her  lips  to  his,  she 
found  no  response  and  told  him  at  once  that  she 
hated  him.  He  would  never  see  her  again,  and 
though  it  had  been  none  of  his  fault,  or  at  least  not 
in  large  measure,  there  would  be  a  certain  impres 
sion  in  her  mind  that  he  had  willfully  dislodged  her 
from  her  correct  and  virtuous  pedestal  and  Colonel 
Eversby  Benham — a  good  friend,  provided  with  a 
sense  of  humor — could  not  fail  to  see  the  affair 
through  his  beloved  sister's  unimaginative  eyes. 


The  Vanishing  Men  39 

Peter  had  tried  to  reach  him  through  the  Air  Min 
istry  and  found  that  on  forty-eight  hours'  notice  he 
had  gone  to  Mesopotamia. 

Above  all,  Peter  had  gone  to  England  to  do  a  cer 
tain  thing — to  meet  the  strange  Brena  Selcoss  and 
at  Benham's  challenge  dissolve  the  mystery  which 
surrounded  her.  All  that  he  had  accomplished  so 
far  had  been  to  look  once  into  her  wonderful  eyes 
from  a  distance  and  hear  from  Muriel  that  ter 
rible  and  unspeakable  and  undisclosed  horrors 
awaited  the  man  upon  whom  this  extraordinary 
young  woman,  with  her  mixture  of  Grecian  and 
Irish  blood,  her  gorgeous  hair  and  jersey  cream 
skin,  her  American  origin  and  her  inexplicable  Eng 
lish  isolation,  bestowed  her  favor. 

Peter  had  always  said  that  many  men  were  really 
two  persons — one,  the  actor  in  life,  clothed  with  a 
body  of  flesh  and  bone;  the  other,  a  second  per 
sonality  without  tangible  reality,  but  who,  as  a 
counselor  possessed  of  a  voice  almost  audible,  often 
advised  caution,  sometimes  played  the  role  of  con 
science,  was  always  a  friend,  but  sometimes  took  on 
a  damnable,  patronizing  manner.  It  was  this  in- 


40  The  Vanishing  Men 

visible  friend  who  had  advised  Peter  to  shut  him 
self  up  with  his  attempts  at  verse  writing  and  had 
led  him  to  procure  a  passage  home;  it  was  Peter 
himself  who  knew  very  well  that  he  would  not  go 
on  board  the  Aquitania,  that  he  had  come  to  Eng 
land  to  meet  some  kind  of  a  witch  woman,  that  he 
had  seen  her  great  dark  eyes  once  and  saw  them 
gazing  at  him  out  of  every  corner  now,  that  he  had 
committed  himself  to  finding  out  all  that  was  to  be 
known  of  her  and  that  in  the  end  he  would  do  some 
unconservative,  break-neck  thing  to  throw  himself 
with  a  crash  of  conventions  into  her  lap  and  note 
what  happened  afterward. 

Peter's  determination,  making  ready  to  reject 
every  advice  of  his  counseling  and  invisible  second 
personality,  was  completely  wasted.  Brena  Selcoss 
acted  first. 

On  the  third  afternoon  of  his  restlessness,  when 
the  night  was  falling  and  the  fog  leaned  on  the 
exterior  of  the  window  panes  of  his  room  like  a 
pile  of  wet  sheep's  wool,  he  had  started  a  lyric 
twenty-two  times  and  twenty-two  times  balked  for 
meter  or  expressive  word,  had  crumpled  up  the  sheet 


The  Vanishing  Men  41 

of  paper  and  thrown  it  at  a  wastebasket.  His  pencil 
was  blunt;  the  crumpled  sheets,  in  the  evil  gray 
light  of  late  afternoon,  having  missed  their  recep 
tacle,  lay  around  the  floor  as  if  DeWolfe's  product 
were  not  poetry  but  snowballs. 

"I'm  a  nice  chump  to  be  writing  verses,"  he  said 
to  himself  in  the  mirror.  "You  look  less  of  a  poet 
than  a  lion-tamer." 

Some  of  Peter's  friends  who  are  able  to  realize 
that  this  man  who  can  play  polo  like  a  centaur  ac 
tually  is  the  author  of  the  lines  beginning,  "Call  ye 
to  the  souls  of  shadows,"  would  have  agreed  with 
him.  There  were  strips  of  interwoven  muscle  upon 
his  bare  brown  forearms  and  a  firmness  about  his 
mouth,  both  tightened  a  little  by  his  service  with 
the  Army,  and  if  there  is  a  poet  in  him  it  is  as  a 
Virginia  farmer  once  told  him,  "a  streak  of  some 
thing,"  perhaps  indeed  a  part  of  that  fundamental 
essence  of  Peter  which  calls  him  to  a  many-sided 
life. 

As  he  looked  at  his  own  troubled  face  in  the 
mirror  the  telephone  bell  rang. 

"Are  you  there?"  inquired  the  operator,  using 


42  The  Vanishing  Men 

the  conventional  London  phrase.  "Right!  Wait, 
please." 

He  heard  a  voice  which  came  out  of  distance  like 
a  voice  which  comes  nearer  through  a  damp  grove 
of  dark  green  trees,  like  an  aroma  which  comes  for 
ward  on  the  wind,  until  it  rose  slowly  to  its  full 
power.  When  the  words  were  distinguishable  he 
knew  that  some  one  was  asking  for  him. 

"Yes,"  said  he,  for  the  moment  held  enthralled 
by  the  warmth  and  rhythm  of  that  voice. 

"I  must  see  you." 

Brena  Selcoss  had  come  to  find  him.  She  had 
taken  the  initiative;  she  had  come  to  London.  He 
did  not  have  to  say,  "Who  is  this?"  She  had 
come. 

Something,  however,  in  that  phrase,  "I  must  see 
you,"  said  with  intensity  by  that  extraordinary 
woman,  about  whom  the  Benhams  knew  so  little 
and  perhaps  Muriel  so  much,  filled  Peter  for  the 
moment  with  an  inexplicable  dread.  This  sudden 
chill  of  self-preservation  was  not  founded  upon  the 
repulsion  of  that  telephonic,  "I  must  see  you," 
uttered  by  a  female  and  always  the  forerunner  of 


The  Vanishing  Men  43 

the  unpleasant,  nor  was  it  based  upon  the  suspicion 
which  he  had  always  had  when,  to  use  one  of  his 
own  phrases,  "a  man  ought  to  know  that  no  woman 
who  comes  toward  one  is  safe,"  nor  indeed  did  it 
rise  from  the  fact  that  he  gave  new  credit  to 
Muriel's  absurd  warning  that  men  who  knew  Brena 
Selcoss  disappeared  like  broken  soap  bubbles.  The 
dread  that  Peter  felt  was  like  a  dread  communi 
cated  by  some  subtle  message  in  a  human  voice 
which  expressed  some  eternal  fear.  It  came, 
perched  upon  his  soul  for  a  second,  and  then  was 
gone. 

He  became  at  once  the  usual  Peter,  thinking 
quickly,  alive  to  the  dangers  of  a  woman  who  would 
follow  a  stranger  to  London,  suspicious  of  her  and 
above  all  thoroughly  delighted  to  risk  himself  in 
any  tangle  she  cared  to  weave  for  him. 

""Where  are  you?"  he  said  genially. 

"At  Mulberry's,"  she  said. 

"The  tea  room?" 

"Yes." 

"Will  you  wait  for  me  there?"  asked  Peter. 
"Please."  His  voice  sounded  very  young — com- 


44  The  Vanishing  Men 

pounded  of  the  breathless  expectancy  and  spon 
taneous  pleading  of  little  boys. 

He  found  her  sitting  at  a  table  beside  a  window 
overlooking  Bond  Street  where  the  fog  was  like  a 
gray  stew  and  passersby  hurrying  home  were  like 
solids  stirred  up  to  the  surface  from  the  bottom  of 
some  kettle.  She  greeted  him  with  a  quiet  smile 
and  pointed  to  the  empty  chair. 

Peter,  conscious  of  his  shrewdness,  said  exactly 
what  she  had  said — nothing.  He  sat  down  across 
from  her,  and  for  the  benefit  of  the  waitress  whom 
he  could  see  out  of  the  corner  of  his  eye  as  a  black 
dress  and  white  apron,  he  pointed  to  Brena's  steam 
ing  chocolate  and  nodded.  He  did  not  take  his  gaze 
from  his  companion's  large  dark  eyes  which  had  in 
them  the  same  look  he  had  seen  once  before  and 
which  had  made  him  think  of  eyes  which  knew  no 
death  but  had  been  looking  out  upon  the  world  for 
centuries  and  centuries.  A  friend  of  his  had  once 
advanced  the  idea,  at  a  dinner  party  in  New  York, 
that  men  and  women's  souls  were  new  or  old,  that 
some  of  those  present  had  been  aged  through  count 
less  residence  in  human  form  back  through  eras  of 


The  Vanishing  Men  45 

history,  that  others  had  been  created  only  a  few 
hundred  years  ago  and  that  still  others  were  new 
souls  just  out  of  the  wrapping.  Peter  recognized 
as  he  looked  into  this  young  woman's  eyes  that  if  he, 
in  worldly  terms,  were  a  half  a  dozen  years  older 
than  she,  in  fact,  she  had  outlived  him  in  rounds  and 
rounds  of  ages. 

Her  eyes  were  so  compelling  that  it  was  difficult 
to  give  attention  to  the  fact  that  her  countenance 
had  in  it  a  baffling  riddle.  Her  face  was  long  with 
a  straight  and  perfect  nose  below  a  forehead  which 
might  be  considered  by  a  classicist  lacking  a  good 
fraction  of  an  inch  in  height.  She  had  a  full 
rounded  chin  below  lips  so  flexible  and  of  so  warm 
and  rich  a  moist  color  that  their  thinness  was 
scarcely  noticeable.  But  there  was  combined  in  her 
features,  which  taken  together  were  by  no  means 
perfect,  a  still  beauty  which  represented  the  Greek 
in  her,  with  some  undercurrent  of  shimmering 
chameleon  elusiveness. 

"You  are  shocked  at  my  behavior,"  she  said  at 
last,  arranging  the  white  ruffling  at  her  throat  as  if 


46  The  Vanishing  Men 

she  preferred  to  treat  Peter's  state  of  mind  casually. 
"Perhaps  you  are  pleased." 

"The  two  go  together,"  he  said  quickly. 

"You  did  not  ask  me  who  I  was.  Yet,  yoju  had 
never  heard  my  voice  before." 

"That  struck  you  forcibly  after  you  left  the  tele 
phone,"  Peter  told  her  with  authority.  "It  was  not 
surprising.  I  had  never  heard  your  voice.  But  I 
had  seen  you.  It  was  only  necessary  to  look  at 
each  other " 

"Yes,  that  was  memorable,"  she  said  solemnly, 
and  looked  far  away.  "But  unfortunately  the 
tempo  of  this  meeting  does  not  warrant  that  little 
laugh  of  yours,"  she  went  on  in  reproval.  "I  came 
to  London  to  see  you,  but  I  came  because  of  Muriel 
Benham." 

Peter  looked  up  in  dismay.  He  said,  "You  don't 
mean  that  she  told  you ?" 

"No  one  told  me,"  said  Brena  Selcoss.  "You 
were  there.  I  heard  scraps  of  conversation.  Once 
I  heard  my  own  name.  It  was  no  fault  of  mine. 
Nor  is  it  a  fault  of  mine  that  with  Mrs.  Benham's 
word  or  two  about  Muriel's  desire  to  go  away,  after 


The  Vanishing  Men  47 

your  sudden  departure  for  London,  that  I  can  see 
what  has  happened.  I  have  come  down  from  the 
country  to  beg  you  to  go  back." 

Peter  shook  his  head  from  side  to  side. 

"In  some  way — some  mysterious  way — just  such 
a  thing  as  this  involves  me  always.  I  have  been, 
unwittingly,  the  cause  of " 

"Oh,  no  you  haven't,"  said  he,  with  vigor. 

Apparently  she  did  not  hear;  she  leaned  forward 
and  said  with  great  earnestness,  "It  touched  me 
deeply — not  because  Muriel  was  once  a  great  friend 
to  me — but  because  I  cannot  bear " 

He  interrupted  her  again  by  saying,  "The  whole 
thing  is  nonsense,  Miss  Selcoss.  I  am  sorry  that 
the  only  way  I  can  put  an  end  to  it  is  to  be  un- 
gallant.  The  plain  truth  is  that  I  do  not  have  the 
slightest  emotion  of  any  kind  about  Miss  Benham. 
No  doubt  she  is  a  very  admirable  English  girl — 
she  is  healthy,  lovely  and  correct.  No  doubt  there 
was  an  unfortunate  misunderstanding,  but  it  was 
not  because  of  any  inclination  of  mine,  and  nothing 
need  be  said  about  it.  I  left  Beconshire  Heath  be 
cause  of  it." 


48  The  Vanishing  Men 

Brena  sat  back  in  her  chair  with  a  sigh  which  ap 
peared  to  Peter  to  state,  sincerely,  relief  from  a 
great  anxiety.  She  folded  her  expressive  hands, 
interlocking  her  fingers,  free  of  all  rings,  and  al 
lowed  her  eyelids  to  almost  close. 

"I  would  have  liked  to  stay  longer/'  he  said. 

"Why?" 

"To  see  you." 

"You  did  not  know  of  me." 

"I  had  seen  you." 

"But  I  would  not  care  much  for  that  kind  of 
judgment,"  she  said.  "It  is  man's  great  delusion 
to  base  inclinations  on  a  glance." 

"Women  do  it  too,"  said  Peter.  "I  admit — we 
both  admit — that  it  is  a  mistake,  don't  we?" 

"Yes — perhaps.    I  am  not  sure." 

"Then  you  too  hoped  that  I  would  stay?" 

She  neglected  His  question  completely,  but  she 
did  not  rebuke  him  for  that  smile  of  pleasure  that 
had  arisen  with  the  idea  that  she  too  had  a  belief 
that  upon  a  rare  occasion  the  exceptional  first  ex 
change  of  the  eyes  is  a  true  and  a  wise  guide  to  the 


The  Vanishing  Men  49 

importance  of  the  future.  Peter  felt  a  glowing 
sense  of  understanding  and  of  companionship. 

Suddenly,  with  a  quick  tensity  that  startled  Peter, 
she  looked  swiftly  about  from  face  to  face  of  the 
persons,  men  and  women,  who  sat  at  the  other  tables. 
He  saw  in  her  eyes  at  that  moment  the  look  which 
Benham  had  described  so  vividly — that  expression 
of  fear  of  some  unknown  peril. 

"You  have  been  in  the  country  a  long  time,"  he 
said  as  promptly  as  he  could.  "You  do  not  like 
London." 

She  smiled  rather  sadly.  "I  love  London.  But  I 
choose  to  stay  at  my  little  retreat  among  the  old 
beech  trees.  I  have  not  come  to  London  since  last 
summer." 

"And  you  have  no  inclination  to  play  in  London 
— to  forget  Beconshire  for  a  day?"  he  asked.  "Of 
course,  now  you  are  here." 

"I  do  not  know  any  one  in  London  now,"  she 
said.  "I  have  an  apartment  here — one  which  I  had 
when  I  first  came  to  England." 

"Came  to  England?"  He  inquired  when,  with 
out  using  the  words. 


50  The  Vanishing  Men 

"Yes,  three  years  ago.  I  think  it  must  have  been 
three  centuries." 

She  sat  for  a  long  time  thinking,  and  the  coming 
and  going  of  the  waitress  with  check  and  change  did 
not  interrupt  her  thought.  Peter  believed  that  she 
was  debating  something;  therefore  he  said,  "Life — 
even  little  life — the  pleasures — the  decent  pleasures 
— well,  they  ought  to  be  seized." 

"You  have  a  sentient  mind,"  she  said,  awakened. 

"Then  do  it,  whatever  it  is,"  he  said.  "There  are 
two  kinds  of  persons  in  the  world — the  minus  per 
sons  and  the  plus  persons,  negative  folks  and  posi 
tive  folks.  You  notice  I  say  folks;  I  am  from 
America." 

"So  am  I,"  she  said. 

"Well,  do  it!"  said  Peter,  referring  to  the  un 
disclosed  problem. 

"Perhaps  I  have  shut  myself  up  too  much,"  she 
said  reflectively.  "I  did  not  know  how  much  I 
loved  to  see  human  beings — just  see  them  sitting 
here  and  there,  walking  in  the  street,  jostling  each 
other,  so  various,  so  like " 

"Unsolved  riddles." 


The  Vanishing  Men  51 

She  looked  into  his  face  long  and  as  if  conduct 
ing  a  search. 

"I  want  to  stay  in  London  for  a  few  days,"  she 
said  at  last,  shaking  her  gloves  as  if  to  express  the 
thrill  it  would  give  her. 

"Why  not?"  asked  Peter.  "Even  if  staying  in 
London  is  the  hazardous  business  which  you  seem 
to  think  it  is,  no  one  will  know." 

He  waited. 

"Except  me,"  he  said. 

Her  eyelids  narrowed  almost  imperceptibly  as 
she  answered.  "But  doubtless  dozens  of  persons 
claim  your  time  here.  It  is,  to  use  your  expression, 
known  that  you  are  in  London." 

"No,  no,  no,"  protested  DeWolfe  impulsively. 
"Not  a  soul." 

She  drew  on  her  gloves. 

"I  think  I  will  stay  in  London,"  she  said,  and 
Peter  thought  he  heard  her  murmur  under  her 
breath,  "God  forgive  me." 


IV 

HE  was  reckoned  a  shrewd  player  of  life.  Men 
who  knew  Peter  DeWolfe  best  say  that  if  he  left  his 
traveling  bag  on  the  sidewalk  on  Fifth  Avenue 
while  he  did  his  shopping  within  some  store,  it  was 
only  because  he  had  estimated  carefully  the 
psychology  of  any  thief  and  concluded  that  one 
could  depend  upon  human  nature  to  believe  that 
luggage  sitting  alone  on  the  pavement  was  placed 
there  as  a  trap.  Peter  always  found  his  bag  where 
he  had  left  it. 

This  is  said  because,  unless  some  complex  reason 
ing  and  calculation  of  the  same  kind  can  be  applied 
to  his  conduct,  it  is  necessary  to  say  he  went  blind 
into  love  of  woman. 

"A  few — a  very  few — men — and  fewer  women," 
Peter  said  once  in  a  letter,  "know  just  how  near  the 
top  of  the  world  can  be  reached  by  the  adventure  of 
free  days  together  where  there  are  no  hours,  and 

52 


The  Vanishing  Men  53 

time  springs  in  magic  jumps  from  noon  to  next  day 
light  perhaps,  and  the  world  is  a  playground  and  a 
city  is  your  toy  and  mankind  is  the  ultimate  friend 
of  both  of  you.  Unfortunately,"  he  added,  "the 
men  who  have  the  quality  of  greatness  to  see  that 
such  a  companionship  over  a  span  of  hours  is  a 
greater  accomplishment  than  a  life  in  a  law  office 
or  the  presidency  of  some  blooming  bank,  are  few. 
Those  who  ever  find  the  girl  are  fewer.  And  those 
who  can  prove  some  essential  quality  of  a  gentle 
man  and  a  whole  man  needed  to  walk  that  delicious 
tight-rope  up  above  the  moon,  without  taking  a  vul 
gar  step  into  space  with  a  nasty  crash  on  landing, 
are  fewest  of  all." 

He  may  have  been  demonstrating  these,  words. 
But  apparently  he  had  abandoned  his  inquiry  into 
the  mystery  of  past  and  future.  He  had  abandoned 
suspicion  of  her  or  curiosity  about  her  life,  though 
ever  and  again  he  found  her  glancing  around  with 
the  unexplained  fear  in  her  dark  eyes,  as  if  she  ex 
pected  to  meet  the  eyes  of  recognition  or  find  some 
fiend  walking  softly  along  behind.  Outwardly  he 
had  given  over  all  but  one  inquiry,  and  that  was  the 


54  The  Vanishing  Men 

exploration  of  the  heart  and  mind  and  soul  of  Brena 
Selcoss  as  they  met  his  companionship. 

Just  when  he  had  shelved  his  first  purpose, 
awakened  by  Benham's  challenge,  and  when  he 
wiped  from  his  mind  the  memory  of  his  one  mo 
ment  of  dread  of  this  girl,  which  of  course  might 
be  traceable  to  Muriel's  extraordinary  and  tragic 
warning,  perhaps  Peter  himself  could  not  have  told. 
It  might  have  been  at  the  moment  when,  after  their 
first  evening  of  strolling  aimlessly  through  the 
mystery  of  the  symbolic  fog  with  their  selves  reach 
ing  toward  one  another,  they  had  perched  like  two 
ravens  on  the  pediment  of  Trafalgar  Monument, 
supperless,  content,  and  watching  the  blurred  lights 
of  one  motor  omnibus  after  another  move  like 
luminous  fish  in  cloudy  water. 

"What  time  is  it?"  Peter  had  asked,  listening  in 
vain  for  the  great  bell  of  St.  Paul's. 

Brena  Selcoss,  sitting  on  her  own  coat,  drew  back 
the  loose  sleeve  of  her  white  silk  waist  from  her 
rounded  cream-colored  wrist,  and  after  a  glance  at 
her  watch,  had  said,  "It  is  after  two.  I  am  hungry 
and  I  am  cold." 


The  Vanishing  Men  55 

Peter  had  said  quickly,  "Perhaps  it  is  my  fault. 
But  you  wouldn't  go  to  the  theater  or  the  cafes. 
How  could  I  deal  with  any  one  who  stubbornly  in 
sists  upon  exploring  alleys  and  arcades  and  the  bank 
ing  district  and  Hyde  Park  until  an  old  campaigner's 
legs  are  almost  worn  out?" 

"You  couldn't." 

"I  shall  find  a  place  now  and  I  shall  like  to  see 
you  eat,"  he  had  said,  jumping  up.  "There  are  some 
persons,  after  all,  who  give  us  delight  when  they 
eat.  Did  you  ever  see  an  old  French  peasant  woman 
who  was  really  fond  of  animals  feeding  them? 
Why,  her  brown  wrinkled  old  face  has  a  smile  like 
a  Hghthouse !  And  I  can  imagine  wearing  that  smile 
when  one's  own  children  are  over  their  bowls  of 
gruel.  Yes,  I  shall  like  to  see  you  eat.  I  am  sure. 
I  would  like  it  still  better  if  I  had  planted  and 
harvested  or  caught  everything  which  was  put  be 
fore  you.  But  that  cannot  very  well  be  because  I'm 
not  a  farmer  or  a  trapper  or  Isaac  Walton — only  a 
New  York  idler.  Besides  Trafalgar  Square  has  no 
soil  for  turnips,  no  brook  trout,  no  pheasants." 


56  The  Vanishing  Men 

She  had  looked  up  with  a  wistful  smile.  "Who  is 
pleased  when  you  eat?" 

"Nobody,"  he  said.  "You  see  I  am  an  orphan. 
There  is  an  old  waiter  at  the  Club.  I  forgot  him. 
He  rubs  his  hands  when  I  am  hungry,  but  for  all  I 
know  it  is  because  the  palms  itch.  He  waited  on 
my  father — the  banker — and  he  looks  like  a  shaven 
Mephistopheles.  That's  all  I  can  remember." 

"You  may  come  with  me  then  to  my  chambers," 
she  had  said.  "We  can  stop  on  the  way — goodness 
knows  where — but  somewhere  and  get  eggs  and 
butter  and  cheese  and  milk.  We'll  go  there." 

"Can  you  cook!"  he  had  exclaimed. 

"Oh,  no.  Not  at  all.  Does  that  make  any  dif 
ference?" 

"Why  should  it?"  Peter  had  inquired  with  sin 
cerity.  He  had  come  to  the  point  of  departure 
from  his  first  ideas  of  his  destined  relationship 
with  Brena  Selcoss. 

In  the  days  which  had  flowed  on,  Peter's  coming 
and  going  at  the  new  hotel  to  which  he  had  moved 
so  that  no  one  might  attach  themselves  to  him,  at 
tracted  the  attention  of  the  doorman  with  the  worn 


The  Vanishing  Men  57 

livery,  brass  buttons  and  chronic  apoplexy.  "A  wery 
peculiar  young  'un,"  he  had  said  to  the  porter.  "A 
wery  odd  'airpin!  'E's  in  an'  hout  at  hall  hours. 
I  think  'e's  gaming." 

Perhaps  he  was.  That  might  have  been  how  he 
began.  But  the  delight  of  a  concentrated  nothing- 
to-do  settled  over  the  two  and  Peter's  steamer  at 
last  left  the  dock  at  Liverpool  with  American  sol 
diers  blaspheming  between  decks  like  a  swarm  of 
hornets  returning  to  their  hive  and  a  purser  scratch 
ing  his  head  over  the  name  of  one  De Wolfe,  who 
wao  printed  on  the  passenger  list  but  did  not  claim 
his  telegram.  Peter  had  lost  himself,  and  like  a 
runaway  child  he  was  glad  of  it.  There  \vas  only 
this  difference — for  Peter  no  one  but  his  lawyers 
would  make  a  search. 

If  one  desires  to  know  how  far  the  breaking  down 
of  conventions  had  gone,  it  is  only  necessary  to 
point  out  that  upon  one  occasion  where  a  laughing 
Sunday  crowd  had  gathered  about  a  hectic  man 
preaching  revolution  from  a  stepladder  in  Hyde 
Park,  Peter  had  sat  down  with  the  girl  to  listen. 
The  sunlight  was  comfortable,  the  voice  of  the 


58  The  Vanishing  Men 

orator  rose  and  broke  with  the  regularity  of  waves 
upon  a  long  warm  beach,  and  Peter,  dropping  back 
with  his  head  on  the  grass,  watched  a  silvery  air 
plane  up  from  Hendon  wheel  about  like  a  gray 
beetle  who  couldn't  decide  where  to  light,  until  he 
fell  asleep. 

When  he  awoke  he  was  generating  apologies.  He 
intended  to  say  that  Brena  and  he,  like  fairy  folk, 
had  acquired  the  magic  exemption  from  sleep  but 
that,  of  course,  occasionally 

None  of  his  embarrassment  was  negotiable;  she 
too  was  asleep;  her  hair,  with  its  red-brown  varia 
tions  of  autumn  leaves,  was  alive  with  the  sheen  of 
the  sunlight,  her  arm  was  under  her  forehead.  The 
orator  had  spun  his  web  to  the  end  and  all  the  crowd 
had  buzzed  away  like  escaping  flies;  but  a  little  stray 
dog,  with  a  face  badly  needing  soap  and  water,  had 
gone  to  sleep  at  her  feet  with  its  face  on  its  paws, 
whining  over  a  dream  of  a  piece  of  meat  with  legs 
which  could  run  faster  than  he. 

To  them  life  had  become  abundant  with  those  un 
noticed  values,  neglected  by  the  commiserable  blind 
beings  who  run  along  the  ruts  of  unimaginative 


The  Vanishing  Men  59 

existence  with  their  hands  put  into  the  coarse  fist 
of  some  conventional,  vulgar  purpose.  Together 
they  went  to  the  docks  at  night  and  listened  to 
Chinese  coolies  in  the  galley  of  a  tramp  steamer 
from  Hong  Kong,  where  up  from  the  yellow  smok 
ing  interior  as  from  a  yellow  smoking  volcanic 
crater  arose  the  strange  crooning,  bubbling,  wailing 
songs  of  the  Far  East.  They  went  to  Hampstead 
and  laughed  at  the  smug  little  houses  with  their 
washed,  respectable  faces.  They  strolled  through 
the  National  Gallery  where  they  found  a  room  of 
portraits  of  men  of  the  time  of  Pitt,  all  of  whomt 
as  if  by  a  manner  of  the  time,  had  their  hands  thrust 
palm  down  into  their  buttoned  coats;  they  called  it 
the  Stomach-ache  Gallery.  They  sat  on  strange 
doorsteps  while  Peter  wrote  verses  to  the  unknown 
inmates  behind  the  barrier.  They  invited  a  match 
woman  to  dine  with  them  and  were  well  repaid  by 
hearing  from  her  lips  a  discourse  upon  the  conceit 
of  each  age  which  always  flatters  itself  into  the  be 
lief  that  it  is  the  world's  crisis.  They  said  good 
night  at  all  hours,  they  ate  when  hungry,  and  were 
as  skillfully  silent  when  the  mood  came  as  they  were 


60  The  Vanishing  Men 

spontaneously  chattering  when  their  minds  danced 
together. 

Peter  might  have  guessed,  but  he  could  not  have 
known  to  what  crisis  this  would  lead. 

"We  have  not  forgotten  how  to  play,"  he  said 
to  her. 

A  look  of  pain  had  come  into  her  face,  and  into 
her  eyes  the  old  look  of  fear. 

"I  don't  like  it  when  you  look  like  that,"  he  had 
said. 

"How?" 

"Afraid." 

"I'm  afraid  of  nothing,  Peter — nothing  which 
makes  ordinary  fear  in  ordinary  hearts,  Peter.  You 
will  see  some  time  that  I  am  not  afraid." 

She  had  laughed  at  his  perplexed  expression,  but 
without  joy. 

"Don't  you  bother  about  me,"  she  told  him. 
"You've  promised  that  you  wouldn't,  you  know." 

He  nodded.     "I've  kept  my  word." 

"Perhaps " 

"What?" 


The  Vanishing  Men  61 

"Perhaps  I'd  better  go  back  to-morrow — back  to 
Beconshire." 

It  was  the  first  word  suggesting  the  end  of  their 
holiday.  Both  knew  that  this  word  must  finally  be 
spoken,  but  Peter  had  not  expected  to  see  quite  the 
quick  pallor  which  came  into  Brena's  face  as  she 
forced  out  the  sentence. 

"We  agreed,  Peter,  didn't  we?  And  the  time  has 
come,  I  think." 

De Wolfe  felt  as  one  who  had  been  touched  sud 
denly  and  unexpectedly  upon  the  elbow  by  the  dank, 
bony  fingers  of  a  corpse. 

"There  is  one  evil  passion  which  I  think  does 
more  harm  than  all  the  others,"  he  said,  clasping  his 
strong  hands  over  one  knee.  "It's  fear.  It  ought  to 
be  made  a  crime." 

"You  know  nothing  of  fear,"  she  replied  quietly. 
"You  have  not  lived  with  fear  day  in  and  day  out 
— year  after  year." 

"No,  I  have  not  lived  with  fear  at  all,"  he  went  on, 
looking  straight  into  her  eyes.  "I  have  not  lived 
with  it  because  it  is  a  parasite.  I  have  been 
wounded,  but  I  learned  that  five-eighths  of  the  pain 


62  The  Vanishing  Men 

was  fear.  I  have  been  apprehensive  of  some  ter 
rible  calamity  and  the  fear  was  the  major  part  of 
the  calamity.  There  are  men  in  the  world  in 
myriads  who  fear  that  they  may  lose  their  money. 
Fear  is  worse  than  poverty,  Brena.  For  God's  sake, 
let's  not  fear!" 

"I  did  not  say  that  I  had  fear,"  she  said.  "I  only 
said  I  had  lived  with  fear." 

"The  world  is  a  fool  about  fear,"  Peter  drove  on. 
"It  makes  cowards,  but  it  is  also  the  mother " 

"Of  what?" 

"Of  murderers,"  he  said. 

Brena  was  silent. 

To  Peter,  as  the  day  came  to  an  end,  it  became 
more  and  more  plain  that  she  had  indeed  decided 
to  go  from  London.  She  spoke  of  it  as  if  it  were 
a  flight  from  some  kind  of  danger.  Once  she  said, 
"You  are  much  too  nice  to  take  any  risks,  Peter." 
He  had  asked  her  about  these  risks,  but  she  said, 
"Among  other  risks,  that  of  wasting  your  energies 
on  something  which  leads  nowhere."  When  they 
had  dined  at  a  little  cafe  on  Jermyn  Street,  she  said, 
"Come  home  with  me.  No  one  sees  us  go  in  and 


The  Vanishing  Men  63 

out.  It  is  like  a  nest  hidden  in  an  old  stump.  We 
can  talk  and  then " 

"What?" 

"Good-by.     Good-night.     Good-by." 

All  the  way  up  Regent  Street  she  kept  her  arm 
through  his  as  if  she  feared  that  suddenly  the 
mortal  part  of  him  would  melt  away,  as  if  this  con 
tact  might  be  made  so  real  that  it  would  live  on  in 
memory,  and  sometimes  the  illusion  of  this  strong 
forearm,  warm  through  its  sleeve,  might  return  to 
her. 

The  apartment,  which  she  had  retained  without 
occupancy  for  some  unexplained  cause,  was  on  a 
street  of  colorless  brick  houses  where  three  street 
lamps,  spaced  with  irritating  precision,  spread  their 
radiance  on  the  front  walls  in  a  fan-shaped  in 
solence.  It  was  in  a  house  at  the  far  end  of  this 
street — modest  quarters  for  one  who  appeared  to 
have  plenty  of  money  at  her  command;  two  flights 
of  carpeted  stairs  led  up  to  a  little  landing  and  her 
door. 

She  lit  the  lamp  in  the  corner  while  Peter  took 
the  key  from  the  hole,  and  the  expanding  light 


64  The  Vanishing  Men 

showed  again  the  gray  and  gold  room  with  its 
chintz  curtains  and  its  old  English  mahogany  and 
the  carved  desk  with  its  burly-maple  panels  and  the 
hangings  woven  in  Java  at  the  windows.  But  Peter 
closed  the  door  gently  with  his  foot  because  he  saw 
none  of  the  room  where  the  light  was  dim.  Once 
more,  as  when  he  had  seen  her  first,  she  stood  be 
neath  a  light  which  poured  down  upon  her  its  flood, 
emphasizing  her  as  if  she,  of  all  the  universe,  had 
the  quality  of  radiance  and  life.  She  had  thrown 
aside  her  cloak;  she  stood  with  an  aura  of  eternal 
youth  about  her,  a  girl  who  had  come  out  of  the 
ages  and  would  live  on  without  end,  the  center  of 
all  things.  She  gazed  back  at  Peter  from  her  dark 
eyes,  wondering,  waiting  for  him  to  move. 

He  walked  toward  her  slowly,  but  without  hesita 
tion.    In  his  face  there  was  a  square  look — the  look 
of  a  fixed  will  that  has  come  into  its  own  at  last. 
"Brena,  I'm  going  to  break  my  promise/' 
"Yes,  dear,  I  understand.    I  can  resist  you,  Peter. 
It  would  be  hard,  but  I  could  do  it.    I  do  not  want 
to  do  it.     The  promise  was  for  your  sake,  Peter. 
Not  for  mine  alone," 


The  Vanishing  Men  65 

*Tve  asked  you  nothing — no  questions,"  he  said, 
putting  his  hands  upon  each  of  her  shoulders  and 
holding  her  at  arm's  length. 

"No,  Peter— none." 

"Because  I  did  not  care,"  said  he. 

"No  matter  what  might  come?" 

"No  matter  what  might  come." 

He  drew  her  toward  him  and  took  a  breath  of 
the  unperfumed  fragrance  of  Brena  Selcoss.  And 
then  with  eager,  hungry  yearning,  expressed  only 
through  the  restraints  of  tenderness  and  profound 
respect,  as  if  indeed  he  had  some  ancient  deity  in  his 
arms,  he  kissed  her  lips,  he  pressed  his  cheek  into 
her  hair,  he  touched  the  back  of  her  neck  with  his 
fingers. 

"I  love  you,"  he  said.  "Can  you  understand  all 
I  mean  by  those  plain  words — I  love  you?" 

"I  love  you,  Peter." 

"You  must  never  leave  me  now." 

She  sprang  back,  tearing  herself  from  him  as  if 
he  had  treacherously  plunged  a  knife  into  her. 

"Not  that,  Peter.  Not  that!  I  thought  you 
knew.  I  thought  this  was — good-by." 


66  The  Vanishing  Men 

Like  one  in  great  pain  which  must  be  borne  in 
silence,  she  threw  back  her  head  and  stood  quivering 
and  tense. 

"You  can't  have  misunderstood!"  she  said  in  a 
breaking  voice.  "Is  this  my  punishment — that  you 
have  misunderstood?" 

"I  want  you,  Brena — forever.  I  could  have 
sworn  I  never  would  want  any  one — like  this." 

"Peter,  it  cannot  be." 

She  seized  his  hand  and,  leaning  over,  pressed 
her  wet  cheek  upon  his  wrist. 

"It  cannot  be,  Peter.  It  happened  when  I  was  no 
more  myself — the  one  you  know — than  I  am  Muriel 
Benham.  It  happened  when  I  was  less  than  eight 
een — seven  years  ago.  I  am  married." 

"Married?"  he  gasped,  putting  his  other  hand 
lightly  upon  her  cheek.  "Where,  then,  is  he  ?  How 
long  ago  did  he " 

"Go?" 

"Yes." 

"Three  years.  I  loathed  him.  I  loathed  his 
eternal  fright." 

"And  where  is  he  now?"  he  asked. 


The  Vanishing  Men  67 

"I  do  not  know." 

She  shuddered. 

"He " 

"Vanished." 

Peter  was  white.  Breathing  hard,  he  said,  "You 
— Brena — will  you  tell  me  everything?" 

"Yes,  Peter — before  I  go.  I  will  tell  you  every 
thing.  It  will  show  you  why  I  am  afraid — for 
you," 


BRENA  SELCOSS  had  been  born  on  American  soil. 

One  of  her  most  vivid  memories  was  that  of  her 
father,  an  austere  man,  who  all  his  life  long  had 
carried  about  in  the  great  and  muscular  body  with 
its  slow  movements  and  its  suggestion  of  latent 
giant  power,  a  restless  soul,  ever  seeking  to  find  its 
way  hither  and  thither  like  a  strong  giant  ant  of 
unceasing  activity  looking  for  new  work. 

She  could  remember  dimly  that  her  mother,  whose 
hair  never  lost  the  red-gold  Celtic  glory  until  she 
and  her  second  child  died  together  when  she  was 
forty-two,  had  referred  with  whispered  awe  to  the 
turbulent  career  of  her  husband,  Demetrius.  There 
were  vague  recollections  of  the  mother's  pride  in  the 
fact  that  he  had  risked  and  lost  his  career,  begun  so 
early  in  life  and  so  brilliantly  in  chemical  research 
and  in  a  professorship  in  Athens,  that  he  had  tossed 
aside  all  consideration  for  himself  to  labor  for  a 

68 


The  Vanishing  Men  69 

constitutional  Greece  and  to  risk  his  life  in  a  con 
spiracy  for  freedom. 

Mary  Vaughn,  as  her  name  had  been  before  her 
marriage,  knew  something  of  insurrection  herself; 
she  had  had  the  ill  fortune  to  be  the  daughter  of 
the  famous  Tom  Vaughn  who  was  forced  to  flee  Ire 
land  with  his  family  after  the  unsuccessful  and  for 
gotten  "Secession  Plot"  of  the  SG'S.  Mary,  from 
the  time  she  was  a  child,  sang  like  a  bird.  She 
might  have  become  a  famous  contralto,  for  her 
voice  had  that  same  warm,  rich  quality  inherited 
by  her  bewitched  daughter,  but  like  a  bird  her  true 
home  was  upon  the  open  moors  with  their  free 
spaces  and  the  shadows  of  the  clouds  passing  over 
the  grass;  New  York,  of  adamant  and  rectangles, 
was  as  good  for  the  joy  of  her  voice  as  it  would 
have  been  for  that  of  a  wild  nightingale.  She  never 
spoke  harshly  of  that  "tumble  Babylon,"  however, 
without  adding,  "But  'twas  there  I  met  your  father, 
Brena,  and  I'll  speak  no  ill  of  it." 

So,  with  some  of  her  sparkling  self  dimmed,  she 
gave  all  her  expression  of  loyalty  to  her  husband; 
her  flight  upon  gauzy,  unsubstantial  wings  was  al- 


70  The  Vanishing  Men 

ways  a  circle  about  his  head,  as  if  she  were  a  bril 
liant  moth  hovering  about  the  top  of  a  grim  moun 
tain  which  always  quivered,  threatening  volcanic 
disasters.  Something  had  died  within  her  when  they 
took  her  from  the  moors  and  the  open  places,  and 
that  which  was  left  was  an  Irish  beauty  and  a  bot 
tomless  well  of  affection  for  her  man  and  her  Brena. 

"It  is  from  her  that  I  have  a  legacy,"  said  Brena. 
"It  is  a  storehouse  of  unspent  passion  and  tender 
ness.  And  it  is  still  mine — to  do  with  as  I  please." 

She  did  not  go  on  to  say  that  those  to  whom  it 
would  be  opened  might  enter  to  be  destroyed. 

Brena  could  not  recall  the  details  of  her  mother's 
accounts  of  the  part  her  father  had  played  in  the  dis 
turbed  period  of  Greece.  There  were  vague  impres 
sions  of  a  secret  organization  under  the  "Council  of 
Twelve"  to  which  he  had  sworn  devotion,  of  a  prob 
lem  of  honor  which  he  had  decided  by  following  a 
course  of  conduct  that  had  brought  down  upon  him 
the  penalty  of  assassination.  A  sharply  defined 
portrait  of  this  young  patriot,  a  member  of  the 
Salamis  Deputation  of  1862  informing  King  Otho, 
the  last  of  the  Bavarian  alien  monarchs,  that  the 


The  Vanishing  Men  71 

throne  of  Greece  was  vacant,  jemained  in  Brena's 
mind.  She  confessed  to  a  thrill  of  pride  that  upon 
an  occasion,  historic  and  momentous,  her  father, 
then  only  twenty-eight,  had  been  present  in  a  major 
role.  This  had  been  the  top  moment  of  his  life; 
those  whom  he  had  aided  turned  upon  him.  The 
strength  of  a  powerful  secret  organization,  gradual 
ly  falling  into  unscrupulous  hands  after  its  true  func 
tions  were  over,  had  been  turned  against  him.  His 
name  became  a  traditional  center  of  oaths  of 
vengeance;  with  knife  wounds  upon  his  great  arms 
and  thighs  and  an  unremoved  bullet  in  his  shoulder, 
he  came  to  America.  He  was  a  man  who  had  lived 
one  life,  and  expected  the  world  to  recognize  him 
as  an  important  being.  It  saw  in  him  only  a  silent, 
learned  man,  inventing  a  thousand  ambitions  and 
from  them  choosing  no  fixed  purpose,  disregarding 
money  in  a  land  where  money,  for  the  time,  was  the 
fetich,  careless  of  poverty  but  humiliated  periodi 
cally  by  debt,  discoursing  upon  biological  chemistry 
years  before  the  scientific  world  had  the  imagina 
tion  to  listen — a  giant,  with  dark  haunting  eyes, 
long  Homeric  hair  and  beard,  always  brushed  back 


72  The  Vanishing  Men 

as  if  he  were  eternally  facing  a  hurricane,  and  a 
voice  and  presence  as  mysteriously  impressive  as 
that  of  some  Elijah.  Even  Brena  remembered  his 
affection  for  her,  profound  as  it  was,  as  being  like 
the  affection  of  some  god  of  mythology  directed 
down  upon  a  beautiful  but  mortal  child. 

Between  the  frivolous  sunlight  of  her  mother  and 
the  magnificent  shadow  of  her  father,  Brena  grew, 
acquiring  from  one  a  whimsical  humor  and  from 
the  other  a  calm  of  high  cliffs  and  of  a  Parthenon. 

According  to  Brena's  own  phrase,  she  "had  no 
childhood  and  all  childhood."  She  had  none  be 
cause  her  father,  after  a  month  or  two  of  concen 
trated  application  of  his  mind  upon  studies  of  sim 
ilarities  in  the  architecture  of  ancient  Mexico  and 
prehistoric  Greece,  would  find  the  butcher,  landlord 
and  grocer  at  his  door,  and  then  as  if  awakened  he 
would  take  his  little  family  and  board  the  train  for 
some  minor  university  where  he  would  teach  him 
self  out  of  debt  and  into  a  period  of  bitterness  of 
heart  because  neither  his  learning  nor  his  important 
place  in  history  were  given  recognition.  With  a 
great  sigh  from  his  expansive  chest,  he  would  move 


The  Vanishing  Men  73 

on  again  in  pursuit  of  some  inquiry,  some  research, 
some  new  application  of  his  heroic,  impractical  head. 
In  consequence,  the  little  girl,  red  of  cheeks,  with 
spindling  legs  and  great  wondering  brown  eyes, 
never  stayed  long  enough  anywhere  for  acquaint 
ance  with  children  and  for  play.  Tutored  by  her 
mother  and  by  the  booming,  terrifying  voice  of 
Demetrius  Selcoss  when  he,  as  he  said,  could  spare 
time  for  it,  she  learned  a  taste  for  books  and  con 
sumed  them  according  to  her  own  story  "like  a 
hungry  little  pig  regardless  of  the  wisdom  of  a  diet 
and  eating  all  that  was  within  reach."  The  books 
served  to  give  her  a  fake  veneer  of  experience  and 
maturity. 

This  outer  covering  was  fake  because  it  failed 
to  represent  the  truth  that  Brena  had  reached  six 
teen,  with  physical  attributes  which  made  men  turn 
as  she  passed  but  without  any  consciousness  of  hav 
ing  approached  womanhood.  Without  contacts  with 
childhood,  ever  on  the  move,  living  in  hotels,  in 
boarding  houses,  in  suburban  cottages,  ever  de 
pendent  upon  one  rickety  patched  old  trunk  and  her 
two  parents,  she  had  acquired  the  habits  of  child- 


74  The  Vanishing  Men 

like  dependence.  Like  a  child  she  found  that  life 
was  shaped  without  intervention  of  her  own.  She 
allowed  herself  to  be  dragged  along  with  her  mixed 
load  of  conceptions  drawn  from  a  helter-skelter 
reading.  Among  other  conceptions  was  that  eternal 
fiction  of  the  gallant  and  perfect  fairy  story  prince 
whose  bride  she  would  one  day  be.  To  be  a  bride 
meant  little  more  in  terms  of  real  life  than  to  be 
come  an  angel. 

"If  I  ever  have  a  daughter,"  said  Brena  Selcoss, 
"I  will  never  allow  her  to  have  this  dangerous 
dream  of  a  Prince  Charming.  It  is  the  common 
foundation  upon  which  girls  throw  sensible  judg 
ment  to  the  four  winds  and  come  to  critical  moments 
without  a  thought  of  the  flowing  years  of  real  life 
which  are  to  come.  It  might  have  wrecked  me 
when  I  was  seventeen." 

While  Brena  was  seventeen,  indeed,  many  land 
marks  had  been  set  up  in  her  development.  Her 
mother  had  died  quietly  in  bed  the  year  before 
without  a  gasp  of  warning,  without  a  murmur,  a 
smile  upon  her  engaging  lips.  Brena  had  been 
asleep  in  the  next  room,  and  Demetrius,  having  one 


The  Vanishing  Men  75 

of  his  spells  of  insomnia,  sat  almost  all  night  long 
on  the  porch  of  their  cottage  in  Dallas,  Texas,  in  a 
rocker  which  squeaked  a  little  as  his  bulk  moved. 
He  had  come  up  at  dawn  to  find  his  wife^  with  the 
first  rays  of  summer  sun  thrown  through  the  shut 
ters  and  onto  the  happy,  lifeless  figure  in  bars  of 
gold.  It  shimmered  on  her  lovely  hair;  in  all  the 
red-gold  mass  there  was  not  one  strand  of  gray. 

"This  is  the  time  for  great  calm,"  he  had  said  to 
Brena,  as  he  woke  her  with  his  giant's  hand  upon 
her  shoulder.  "The  life  has  gone  from  your 
mother's  beautiful  body,  my  daughter,  but  she  will 
live  always  with  us  because  she  was  a  brave  and 
tender  soul  which  endures  forever." 

"I  thought  that  she  had  endless  life,"  he  said 
after  a  pause,  burying  his  bearded  face  in  his  sun- 
browned  hands.  "It  is  the  way  with  me  always — 
I  am  unprepared — always  unprepared." 

This  was  the  only  flinching  brought  out  in  him 
by  the  death  of  the  Irish  girl  he  had  adored  so 
completely,  to  whose  songs  he  had  listened  while 
his  life  went  askew  and  in  whose  smiles  he  had 
warmed  the  chills  of  bitterness  and  whose  arms  had 


76  The  Vanishing  Men 

stilled  the  restlessness  behind  his  great  dark  glow 
ing  eyes.  He  went  on  his  way  unchanged,  but  no 
doubt  making  new  attempts  to  reach  across  the 
chasm  which  separated  him  from  the  yearning  heart 
of  his  daughter. 

These  attempts  were  failures.  Beside  each 
other,  when  he  was  home,  they  were  as  persons 
alone:  the  one  reminiscent,  living  in  a  past  where 
great  figures  of  history  stalked  majestically;  the 
other  expectant,  with  the  eyes  of  youth  turned  away 
from  the  shadows  and  toward  the  glints  of  the  fu 
ture. 

For  three  or  more  years  before  Mary  Vaughn 
Selcoss  had  died,  she  had  been  alarmed  by  a  new 
characteristic  of  her  husband.  In  Dallas  when  he, 
who  once  had  known  the  tang  of  great  deeds  done 
in  a  setting  of  romantic  grandeur,  came  out  through 
the  hot  streets  on  a  common  electric  car  and  walked 
up  a  suburban  avenue  with  its  cheap  bungalows  and 
its  phonographs,  its  lawn  sprinklers  trying  to  raise 
the  sun-baked  grass  from  the  dead,  and  its  con 
crete  sidewalks,  Brena's  mother  had  noticed  a  look 
in  his  eyes  of  a  haunting  fear. 


The  Vanishing  Men  77 

"I  wonder  what  would  become  of  you  and  Brena 
if  anything  happened  to  me,"  he  had  said  in  ex 
planation. 

"Nothing  will  happen  to  you,"  Brena's  mother 
had  gayly  answered.  "Come  into  the  house.  I've 
something  to  show  you." 

"To  show  me?" 

"Yes — a  happy  little  home  with  the  rent  all  paid 
up  till  last  February.  Nothing  will  happen  to  you." 

But  the  fear  was  written  upon  his  countenance 
deeper  and  deeper,  like  a  tracing  often  repeated.  He 
said  to  his  wife  on  one  occasion,  "You  say  this  fear 
is  new.  No,  dearest;  I  have  carried  it  about  for 
many,  many  years." 

Long  after  her  mother  had  gone  Brena  had  seen 
that  look  in  her  father's  eyes. 

"Perhaps  he  is  afraid  he  will  lose  his  place  with 
the  oil  company,"  she  had  said  to  herself  many 
times. 

Opportunity  enough  was  given  her  in  those  days 
to  speak  to  herself.  She  had  gone  beyond  any 
school  training  not  only  in  independence  but  in 
learning;  nevertheless  she  remained  a  child — a 


78  The  Vanishing  Men 

lonely,  sensitive  child  in  the  heart  of  her  ripening 
womanhood.  Her  father's  austerity  and  her  own 
peculiar  shyness  made  the  pair  appear  to  the  Texan 
neighbors  aloof,  strange,  like  persons  over  whom 
some  shadow  hung.  And  her  father  considered 
alone?  He  too,  even  to  her,  was  in  spite  of  all  his 
giant  desire  for  tenderness,  also  aloof,  strange,  and 
over  him  some  shadow  also  cast  its  menacing 
shape. 

Perhaps  this  shadow  was  explained  when 
Demetrius,  the  learned  and  impractical,  the  heroic 
and  the  humbled  exiled  gentleman  of  Athens,  stepped 
in  front  of  a  moving  train  one  evening  as  he  was 
trying  to  cross  the  tracks  which  run  through  the 
Dallas  streets,  and  then  lay  staring  up  at  the  sky, 
his  hair  and  beard  brushed  back  as  if  he  faced  a 
tempest. 

It  was  the  doctor  who  carried  the  news  to  Brena. 
He  stood  beside  the  engraving  of  the  Acropolis  in 
its  frame  battered  with  many  packings  and  unpack- 
ings  and  many  hangings  and  removals  and  many 
journeys  in  the  bottoms  of  trunks. 

"You  do  not  weep?"  he  inquired. 


The  Vanishing  Men  79 

"No,"  said  Brena,  looking  at  him  with  her 
blanched  face. 

The  doctor  was  a  little  dried  up  Southerner, 
whose  manner  straddled  between  his  Kentucky 
birthright  and  the  Prussian  medical  schools  where 
he  had  acquired  his  education. 

"He  was  a  noble  man,"  he  said.  "He  was  a 
haunted  man  as  well." 

Brena  said  nothing. 

"If  he  had  lived  another  six  months,  he  would 
have  been  totally  blind.  Only  I  knew  that.  He 
would  tell  no  one.  And  what  would  have  supported 
you  both  then,  eh?  The  public  funds,  I  reckon." 

The  woman,  who  was  still  a  child,  shivered. 

"He  was  sorely  tempted — your  father,"  said  Dr. 
Gregory.  "He  had  insured  his  life  and  he  would 
have  killed  himself  to  provide  for  you.  Yes,  that 
was  his  plan.  He  asked  me  about  it.  Such  a  man ! 
Hesitating  to  blow  his  brains  out  because  of  what  ? 
Honor.  Not  to  defraud  a  soulless  corporation,  eh? 
Not  doing  it,  either.  Too  virtuous!  Too  just! 
Splendid!  Magnificent!  Like  his  own  forehead — 
noble,  classic!" 


80  The  Vanishing  Men 

Brena  covered  her  face  with  her  hands. 

"Ah  well,"  said  the  Doctor,  "it  was  well  to  know 
such  a  man.  You  must  be  brave — a  good  girl,  eh? 
Your  father  may  have  been  killed  in  answer  to  his 
prayers.  One  cannot  grope  his  way  in  front  of  a 
moving  train." 

"Did  he  die — without — a  word?"  she  asked. 

"No;  I  was  going  to  speak  of  that,"  said  Greg 
ory,  chewing  harder  than  ever  on  his  ever  present 
toothpick.  "He  was  conscious  for  a  time — quite 
conscious.  He  said  that  you  never  knew  how  much 
he  loved  you — some  awkwardness,  he  said,  pre 
vented.  He  asked  me  to  tell  you  that  something 
would  protect  you  from  danger.  He  didn't  say 
what.  Something  would.  He  said  that  you  must 
not  be  afraid." 

The  Doctor  sighed  and  looked  about  the  room 
with  its  few  books,  pictures,  ornaments — the  shabby 
remnants  of  a  life  of  discriminating  taste,  high 
purposes  and  poverty. 

"There  isn't  much  for  you  to  begin  on,"  he  said 
reflectively.  "Five  hundred  life  insurance.  The  rest 
had  gone  because  he  didn't  pay  the  premiums.  Too 


The  Vanishing  Men  81 

honest  to  take  it  by  blowing  his  brains  out — a  noble 
man — the  timbers  of  a  noble  human  craft  deserving 
better  of  life's  sea!" 

He  was  proud  of  that  phrase. 

"I  think  you  will  find  that  Mrs.  Wilkie  on  the 
corner  will  take  you  in  for  a  while,"  he  suggested. 
''You  will  find  work." 

Yes,  Brena  would  find  work.  The  granddaughter 
of  the  proud  and  intellectual  Tom  Vaughn,  the 
daughter  of  the  man  who  in  America  called  himself 
Demetrius  Selcoss,  once  the  teacher  of  chemistry 
in  the  National  Institution  of  Greece,  who  had  the 
right  to  wear  royal  decoration  and  who  bore  on  his 
body  the  marks  of  battles  for  liberty — she  was  now 
merely  a  girl  alone  in  the  world,  without  friends, 
money,  background,  training,  experience.  A  great 
Democracy  had  leveled  her.  Possessed  only  of 
that  sun-ripened  beauty  of  fruit  coming  into  its 
prime  with  untouched  bloom  upon  it,  to  which  was 
added  the  charm  and  the  dangers  of  immaturity  and 
innocence,  her  assets  were  a  hazard.  Her  mind  and 
its  capacities  and  its  rich  supply  of  academic  learn 
ing  were  not  currency  which  passed  as  legal  tender 


82  The  Vanishing  Men 

among  the  persons  she  would  know.  Her  father, 
who  had  said  that  he  always  met  life  unprepared, 
might  well  have  added  that  he  left  it  without  pro 
vision. 

Brena  went  to  live  with  Mrs.  Wilkie. 

She  remembers  that  lady  as  an  intensely  practical 
woman  who  was  always  in  a  hurry  and  who  often 
repeated  the  phrase,  "If  one  looks  after  pennies, 
the  dollars  will  take  care  of  themselves."  On  haste, 
she  had  grown  almost  unpleasantly  stout,  and  one 
of  the  disagreeable  memories  of  Brena's  tragic 
storehouse  is  the  picture  of  this  woman's  absurdly 
small  mouth,  which  would  not  stay  fixed  in  one 
spot  between  her  fat  cheeks  and  her  fat  chin,  but 
moved  about,  appearing  to  be  located  first  here  and 
then  there,  like  a  newly  punched  orifice.  It  never 
moved  so  unpleasantly  as  when  she  was  talking  of 
her  ancestry,  her  relatives  who  had  great  wealth 
and  her  husband's  injustice  and  brutality  in  making 
her  give  up  Society.  Her  husband  had  given  up 
her  society;  he  had  gone  to  parts  unknown.  She 
brooded  upon  her  fancy  that  she  could  have  been  a 
kind  of  dowager  grandess  if  she  had  been  born  un- 


The  Vanishing  Men  83 

der  a  luckier  star  or  had  rejected  Sam  Wilkie.  For 
the  rest,  her  principal  interest  was  the  income  from 
her  boarders  and  a  paranoiac  aversion  to  the  Ro 
manist  Church  about  which  she  whispered  scandals 
and  accusations  in  a  kind  of  confidential  mania  of 
prevarication,  knowing  no  limit  nor  restraint. 

She  would  not  have  been  of  any  particular  im 
portance  in  the  life  of  Brena  Selcoss  had  it  not 
been  for  two  facts.  One  of  them  was  that,  lacking 
other  distinction,  she  could  have  that  of  giving 
refuge  at  so  much  and  so  much  for  room  and 
board  per  week  to  the  most  alluring  young  creature 
that,  for  the  moment,  was  known  to  the  male  eyes 
of  Dallas  as  an  unsolved  riddle.  The  other  fact  was 
that  she  was  the  half-sister  of  the  mother  of  Jim 
Hennepin  of  Virginia. 


yi 

JIM  HENNEPIN,  who  liked  to  attach  to  his  name 
the  words  "of  Virginia,"  was  the  last  of  a  line  which 
had  been  brought  to  American  soil  by  a  refugee 
Huguenot  connected  distantly  with  the  great  ex 
plorer  of  the  headwaters  of  the  Mississippi.  There 
are  those  who  remember  him  in  his  escapades  in 
Danville,  and  felt  relief  when  his  father,  who  had 
himself  dissipated  the  small  remainder  of  the 
Hennepin  v/ealth  and  tobacco  lands  in  futile  specu 
lations  through  a  Washington  broker,  said  to  Jim, 
"You  can  go  down  to  your  mother's  sister  in  Texas. 
She  will  put  you  up  and  I  have  a  job  all  ready  for 
you  with  a  cotton  buying  and  commission  house  in 
Dallas.  There  is  nothing  left  in  my  own  pockets. 
The  only  genius  you  have  is  for  getting  into  trouble ; 
your  only  talent  is  for  figures.  As  time  goes  on 
the  accountant  is  playing  an  ever  growing  part  in 
American  business,  just  as  the  drunkard  is  playing 
a  lesser  part.  Do  you  get  my  meaning,  son?" 

84 


The  Vanishing  Men  85 

This  accounted  for  the  presence  of  Jim  Hennepin 
in  Texas.  He  had  been  there  two  years.  Compton 
Parmalee  &  Co.  had  found  nothing  to  criticize  in 
his  bookkeeping.  In  fact,  it  had  qualities  of  genius 
which  sometimes  make  bookkeeping  not  only  a  cold 
record,  but  a  vitalized  inspiration  of  business. 
Hennepin  was  a  useful  addition  to  Compton 
Parmalee's  small  staff.  He  drank  at  the  Club,  but 
with  a  moderation  considering  his  resistance  to  the 
effect  of  alcohol.  He  was  a  popular  young  man  in 
Dallas,  and  the  fact  that  so  many  men  in  that  Texas 
city  have  now  forgotten  that  they  ever  heard  of 
this  youth  is  only  a  commentary  upon  the  truth 
that  the  impressions  most  of  us  make  are  not  even 
fine  scratches  when  time's  roller  has  passed  once 
or  twice  over  men's  memory  and  to-day  has  become 
so  much  more  important  than  yesterday  and  that 
which  is  in  sight  covers  that  which  is  gone  like 
new  strata  in  a  geological  period. 

It  would  be  untrue  to  deny  that  Jim  Hennepin 
was  an  attractive  figure.  If  he  had  craft  and 
viciousness,  as  some  have  said  he  had,  it  was  belied 
by  the  Hennepin  smile — an  inviting  smile,  invoking 


86  The  Vanishing  Men 

the  cheer  of  the  moment  like  a  smile  of  a  boy. 
Furthermore  he  was  tall  and  graceful,  like  an  oars 
man  in  an  English  college  eight.  He  was  more  like 
the  bad  son  of  an  earl  than  a  bookkeeper,  and  per 
sons  often  inquired  who  he  was,  especially  before 
they  had  heard  him  speak  in  his  care-free  modern 
American  slang  figures,  and  were  surprised  to  find 
that  he  was  older  than  he  looked,  had  fought  his 
education  for  several  wasted  years  at  the  University 
of  Virginia  and  was  earning  forty-three  dollars  a 
week  and  spending  fifty-nine  when  he  was  over 
thirty. 

The  first  time  he  ever  saw  Brena  Selcoss  was  one 
morning  when  he  had  come  back  from  a  vacation 
of  several  weeks  at  some  ranch  among  the  pecan 
trees  in  Coleman.  His  vacations  had  become  a 
mystery  to  other  young  men  who  were  employed; 
all  that  appeared  necessary  was  for  Jim  to  go  to 
Compton  Parmalee  and  tell  him  when  he  would  be 
back.  It  was  ascribed  to  his  magic  quality  of 
persuasion.  Some  said  that  if  Hennepin  smiled 
and  asked  in  his  inviting,  breathless  manner  there 
would  be  no  surprise  to  find  that  the  President  of 


The  Vanishing  Men  87 

the  United  States  had  allowed  him  to  take  the 
whole  of  Alaska  under  the  Homestead  Act.  And 
yet,  though  no  one  in  Dallas  then  knew  of  it,  this 
was  the  man  of  unchecked  wild  youth,  who  had 
beaten  a  train  conductor  almost  lifeless  in  the  Balti 
more  station  and  had  killed  his  riding  horse  with  a 
stone  held  in  his  strong  young  hand. 

Brena  was  sitting  at  an  early  breakfast  when  he 
came  in.  He  did  not  speak  to  her ;  he  merely  stared. 
After  a  while,  without  taking  his  eyes  away  from 
her,  he  put  his  gun,  his  coat  and  his  bag  into  a 
chair  behind  him.  He  still  gazed  at  her  and  she, 
astonished,  gazed  back.  He  suggested  Apollo;  he 
suggested  vaguely  the  sudden  appearance  of  the 
fairy  prince.  He  was  giving  an  exhibition  of  his 
supreme  rudeness — his  almost  majestic  and  mem 
orable  insolence;  but  it  was  also  a  supreme  compli 
ment,  the  best  he  knew  how  to  bestow. 

"Well,"  said  he  at  last.     "It's  springtime." 

He  spoke  as  if  he  had  been  a  messenger  from 
Destiny,  as  if  Spring  were  Brena's  time  and  that 
time  had  come. 

It  was  like  a  sentence  of  a  court. 


88  The  Vanishing  Men 

With  a  quirk  about  the  corners  of  his  mouth,  he 
walked  boldly  toward  her  and  looked  down  into  the 
dish  of  cereal  on  the  table  beneath  her  eyes. 

"Nothing  but  milk,"  said  he.  "No,  by  God,  you 
shan't  have  milk  on  your  rice !  It's  an  outrage.  You 
are  the  young  queen  and  I  am  the  Captain  of  the 
Palace  Guards.  And  I'm  off  in  a  borrowed  motor 
car  to  get  you  the  richest,  thickest  pint  of  cream 
in  the  city,  and  the  speed  laws  can't  stop  me." 

This  absurd  young  man,  with  his  infant  smile,  his 
athlete's  body  and  his  elementary  hungers,  leaped 
out  down  the  steps,  into  a  new  touring  car  in  which 
he  had  come,  cut  out  the  muffler  and  was  gone. 

He  came  back  with  cream.  His  aunt  said,  "Jim, 
you  are  crazy."  But  he  was  not  crazy.  He  had  an 
instinct  for  creating  romance ;  he  made  the  illusion 
when  he  wished  because  he  had  learned  that  ad 
ventures,  particularly  those  with  women,  failed  or 
succeeded  according  to  the  distance  from  the  hum 
drum  world  he  could  lead  on  as  a  guide  into  the 
tropical  and  gaudy-flowered  jungle  of  Change. 

He  became  Brena's  knight.  He  said  so  himself. 
He  told  her  that  for  her  to  contemplate  going  to 


The  Vanishing  Men  89 

work  was  absurd — it  was  an  impropriety  like  feed 
ing  American  beauty  roses  to  army  mules.  Brena 
laughed  and  went  to  work  one  Monday  morning; 
but  Jim  Hennepin  had  struck  the  right  note  when 
he  had  told  her  he  would  be  her  knight.  She  said, 
"I  do  like  knights — not  for  myself,  because  I  am 
so  healthy." 

"Yes,  you  burst  with  it,"  he  said,  looking  at  her 
forehead,  her  throat,  her  wrists.  "It  is  my  dis 
traction." 

"Nevertheless  I  like  knights  because  they  are 
knights." 

"I  am  the  originator  of  the  knight  idea,"  he  said. 
"Somebody  has  told  you  it  was  King  Arthur  or 
some  one  else.  Mere  plagiarism !  Come  with  me 
this  evening  on  a  ride  to  Waco." 

He  took  her  everywhere  and  his  aunt  scowled. 

"Jim,  she  is  only  seventeen,"  Mrs.  Wilkie  said, 
panting. 

"She  looks  twenty-five,"  he  answered. 

"But  it  leads  nowhere,"  said  the  aunt.  "No 
where  except  to  scandal." 

"Scandal?"   replied  Hennepin  yawning.     "Non- 


9O  The  Vanishing  Men 

sense!  Also  piffle!  A  man  takes  a  beautiful  girl 
around  for  the  same  reason  that  you'd  wear  a  dia 
mond  tiara  if  you  had  one,  especially  if  it  had  been 
given  you  by  some  broker.  It's  just  a  symbol  of 
one's  ability  to  have  the  right  things.  It's  ego." 

"Is  that  all,  Jim?" 

"Yes,"  he  said,  lying  glibly. 

"Because  you  haven't  the  money  to  be  married, 
Jim,"  she  said,  moving  her  little  mouth  over  so 
that  it  looked  like  a  newly-punctured  pink  opening. 
She  liked  to  live  near  immorality;  it  gave  her 
vicarious  pleasure.  She  had  a  magazine  picture 
of  a  certain  French  actress  tacked  up  beside  her 
looking-glass.  She  would  have  been  sorry  if  Brena 
had  suffered  misfortune  from  Jim,  but  also  she 
would  have  been  glad  just  as  one,  though  sorry  to 
hear  of  a  distant  acquaintance  dying,  has  a  thrill  of 
interest  in  finding  a  familiar  name  in  the  obituary 
notices. 

Hennepin  was  whimsical  enough  to  repeat  to 
Brena,  word  for  word,  this  conversation. 

They  were  sitting  in  the  motor  car  looking  out 
over  the  undulating  Texas  prairie.  In  the  hollows 


The  Vanishing  Men  91 

the  red  bud  was  in  bloom  and  the  air  of  dusk  was 
like  the  light,  velvety. 

"It  never  occurred  to  her  that  I  might  love  you," 
he  said. 

Brena  said  nothing. 

"Don't  you  love  me  a  little  ?"  he  asked. 

"I  don't  know,  Jim — really,  I  don't  know.  I 
don't  know  what  love  is.  I've  only  read  about  it, 
and  it  is  just  like  reading  about  some  place  you've 
never  been.  I  wouldn't  know  when  I  had  arrived 
there  and  stood  on  the  very  spot." 

"My  God,  you're  like  a  new  flower,  opened  up 
for  the  first  time  and  wet  with  dew !" 

As  if  he  could  not  conceal  haste,  he  seized  her 
hand  and  squeezed  it  until  she  said,  "Oh,  Jim !" 

"Well,  you're  fond  of  me?" 

"Yes,  I  am,  Jim.    I'm  fond  of  you." 

"Perhaps  it's  because  you  have  no  one  else  to  be 
fond  of,"  he  suggested. 

"I  don't  know,"  she  told  him.  "I  don't  know 
yet." 

He  looked  around  at  the  yellow  horizon  in  the 
West  and  shivered. 


92  The  Vanishing  Men 

"We  aren't  by  ourselves,"  he  exclaimed  with  irri 
tation.  "Not  here  in  Dallas.  We  ought  to  take  a 
trip." 

"A  trip!"  said  Brena.  "How  could  we  take  a 
trip?" 

"You  mean  because  of  money?  Well,  I'm  going 
to  fix  that."  He  smiled  craftily.  "I've  a  strangle 
hold  on  some  money,  Brena.  I  suppose  that  when 
I  turn  up  with  some  real  money  people  will  say 
that  I  dipped  into  the  till  or  had  a  rich  uncle  die. 
It  will  be  such  a  novelty  to  have  a  roll.  But  they'll 
be  wrong.  I'll  get  it  my  own  way.  And  it's  com- 
ing." 

"Oh,  Jim!" 

"Money  or  no  money,  I  want  you,"  he  said. 
"Some  day  I'll  make  you  say  you  love  me." 

Brena  lay  awake  under  a  hot  roof  wondering 
whether  she  loved  Jim  Hennepin.  There  was  no 
one  to  tell  her  that  she  did  not. 

As  the  weeks  went  on  she  found  herself,  asking 
where  the  end  would  be  of  day  after  day  of  show 
ing  perfumed  wives  of  Dallas  business  men  em 
broidered  linens  at  the  Porto  Rican  store,  of  walk- 


The  Vanishing  Men  93 

ing  home,  sometimes  with  men  staring  at  her,  of 
trying  to  find  interest  in  the  chocolate  fudge  minds 
of  girls  who  did  not  like  to  have  her  around  be» 
cause  she  talked  like  a  professor  and  wore  the  beauty 
they  wished  was  theirs.  It  was  not  clear  that  Jim 
was  not  the  one  man  of  all,  the  prince  who  stepped 
out  of  nothing  and  held  out  his  hands  to  her  in  some 
kind  of  miraculous  tableau.  No  one  reminded  her 
that  she  was  only  seventeen;  she  felt  that  she  was 
as  old  as  the  pyramids,  for  her  reading  had  made 
her  appear  as  related  to  the  past.  More  than  any 
thing  else  some  fundamental  part  of  her  declared 
that  she  was  as  nothing,  that  whatever  she  might 
do  or  become  there  could  be  no  disaster,  no  loss; 
that  she  was  created  to  be  given  away. 

One  day  Jim  came  home  at  the  noon  hour.  He 
did  not  usually  come  then,  and  evidently  he  had  not 
come  to  have  lunch  there,  for  he  stood  outside  the 
door  where  his  aunt's  piggy  eyes  could  not  see  him, 
and  beckoned  to  Brena  mysteriously. 

When  she  had  come  out  onto  the  porch,  he  took 
her  hand  and  led  her  around  the  corner  of  the 
house.  She  could  always  remember  the  heat  of  the 


94  The  Vanishing  Men 

blazing  sun  of  noon  which  flattened  its  burning  upon 
them  as  if  it  were  some  great  wrath. 

"Look  here!"  said  Jim,  with  a  kind  of  ferocity 
in  his  voice  and  eyes.  "I'm  going  away.  Compton 
Parmalee  won't  be  in  Dallas,  and  I've  an  errand 
to  do." 

"You're  so  excited,  Jim." 

"Yes,  I  know.  But  the  time  has  come.  I  want 
to  know  if  you  love  me." 

He  did  not  appear  to  care  much  what  her  answer 
would  be. 

"I  think  I  do,  Jim." 

"You're  willing  to  take  a  trip?  Brave  enough  to 
go  to  St.  Louis  alone?  To  meet  me?" 

"You  mean  you  want  to  marry  me,  Jim  ?" 

"Why  yes,  if  it  turns  out  all  right." 

"I'll  go." 

"Brave  enough?" 

"I'm  not  much  of  a  coward,  Jim — that  least  of 
all." 

"Well,  then — listen.  Here's  a  hotel.  The  name  is 
written  on  that  card.  Be  there  on  Friday,  the 


The  Vanishing  Men  95 

twelfth  of  the  month.  I'll  be  there  at  four  o'clock. 
You  better  come  the  day  before.  Get  a  room  and 
don't  be  frightened." 

"No,  Jim." 

"Why  do  you  look  at  me  so?" 

"Because  I  have  no  money  now." 

"That's  all  right.  Here,  take  this.  It's  plenty, 
eh?  Don't  let  any  one  see  it.  And  you  won't 
say " 

"Of  course  not,  Jim — not  anything." 

"Your  hand  on  that." 

She  put  her  hand  in  his. 

"Why  are  you  going  away,  Jim  ?" 

He  looked  into  her  eyes,  and  if  Brena  had  known 
the  world  better,  she  would  have  seen  something  of 
the  brutality  of  Jim  Hennepin  at  that  moment. 

"Tell  me,  Jim." 

"I've  had  a  call,"  he  said  craftily.  "If  I  can  tell 
you  when  I  come  for  you  in  St.  Louis  you'll  say 
that  it  is  all  the  strangest Well,  I've  had  a  call." 

Brena  went  to  St.  Louis.  She  had  not  marked 
the  date  on  her  little  calendar  on  the  bureau ;  it  was 


96  The  Vanishing  Men 

not  necessary  because  she  was  not  ready  to  forget, 
and  besides  some  one  might  ask  her  a  question. 
Some  one  might  have  asked  why  she  went.  And 
she  could  not  have  told. 


BRENA  SELCOSS  returned  from  St.  Louis  on  the 
sixteenth  of  the  month. 

The  train  arrived  in  Dallas  in  the  early  morning 
when  the  night  prairie  wind  was  still  cool  but  she 
spent  the  last  dollar  in  her  purse  to  be  driven  to 
Mrs.  Wilkie's  in  one  of  the  old  city  station  hacks. 

"Well!"  said  the  round  landlady  exploding  the 
breath  from  her  little  mouth  to  express  astonish 
ment,  inquiry  and  disapproval  all  at  once. 

"Yes,  I  came  back,"  Brena  replied  lifting  her  suit 
case  up  the  steps  wearily. 

"I  thought  I  was  going  to  lose  all  my  nice  young 
people,"  Mrs.  Wilkie  said,  turning  on  the  disc  record 
of  her  false  good  nature.  "Jim  Hennepin  went  with 
hardly  a  thank  you.  There's  been  no  end  of  mail 
for  him.  I  didn't  know  where  he'd  gone ;  he  made 
such  a  mystery  about  it,  so  I  sent  the  letters  to  his 
office.  They  probably  know  about  him — more  than 
I  do.  He  didn't  tell  you  where  he  went?" 

97 


98  The  Vanishing  Men 

"No,"  said  Brena,  "he  didn't  tell  me." 

"And  not  a  word  from  him.  Not  so  much  as  a 
picture  postcard." 

Brena  was  trying  to  pass  around  the  bulk  of  the 
older  woman. 

"And  you  went  off  yourself  without  much  ex 
planation,"  Mrs.  Wilkie  complained,  putting  herself 
in  the  way,  "and  without  knowing  whether  or  not 
you  was  coming  back." 

She  looked  all  over  the  girl  from  head  to  foot 
with  an  expression  in  her  beady  eyes  indicating  that 
it  would  have  been  better  if  a  legal  guardian  had 
been  appointed  for  Brena. 

"Well,  I'm  here." 

"So  I  see.    Have  you  had  breakfast?" 

"I  don't  want  any,"  replied  Brena. 

She  went  up  to  her  room  under  the  roof  where 
upon  the  bedspread  were  the  dust  marks  made 
by  her  suit  case  when  she  had  thrown  it  up  to  pack 
six  days  before.  She  put  it  back  on  those  marks 
as  if  a  round  of  life  had  been  completed;  wearily 
she  opened  it  and  the  first  object  she  took  out  was 
u  piece  of  soap,  done  up  neatly  in  a  wrapper  with 


The  Vanishing  Men  99 

violets  in  a  wreath  around  the  legend,  "Made  ex 
pressly  for  this  Hotel."  She  held  it  for  a  long  time 
in  her  hand,  staring  down  at  it.  Then  she  got  up 
to  cross  the  room  to  the  picture  of  the  Acropolis — 
her  father's  picture,  the  last  possession  of  the  fam 
ily.  For  a  long  time  too  she  looked  at  this  en 
graving  in  its  travel-battered  frame — a  relic  of 
Demetrius  Selcoss. 

"He  said  not  to  be  afraid,"  she  told  herself.  "He 
said  something  would  come  if  I  were  in  danger." 

Downstairs  at  about  that  same  moment  Mrs. 
Wilkie  was  writing  in  her  diary.  At  one  time  in 
her  life  she  had  acquired  the  fancy  that  the  memoirs 
of  women  often  were  important — the  original 
sources  of  historical  facts  and  the  mirror  of  so 
ciety  of  a  period — and  the  diary  habit  kept  its  grip 
upon  her  long  after  she  had  ceased  to  say  to  her 
self,  "Think  what  it  would  have  meant  if  Madame 
de  Maintenon  had  kept  a  diary!"  Now  she  wrote 
in  the  same  hasty,  out-of-breath  style  with  which 
she  conducted  all  life — leaving  out  pronouns  and 
writing  sentences.  "Went  shopping.  Saw  Bertha. 


IOO          The  Vanishing  Men 

Said  her  husband's  teeth  kept  her  awake  getting 
hot  water  bottle." 

She  poised  her  fountain  pen  and  wrote:  "Brena 
Selcoss  returned  to-day  from  St.  Louis.  Said  she 
had  errand  there.  There  is  a  frightened  look  in  her 
eyes."  A  drop  of  ink  fell  and  spattered  out.  She 
blotted  it  and  left  the  outline  of  a  little  black  fiend 
which  danced  upon  the  page. 

It  may  have  been  true  that  Brena  had  in  her  great 
dark  eyes  a  frightened  look  but  there  was  nothing 
to  show  panic  in  her  conduct.  For  a  girl  who  was 
not  yet  eighteen  she  exhibited  a  great  deal  of  com 
mon  sense.  She  went  back  to  the  Porto  Rican 
shop  and  asked  for  her  old  position.  It  was  given 
to  her  and  life  was  renewed  again  in  a  pulsing 
monotony  of  that  slightly-soiled  middle-class  re 
spectable  vulgarity  which  appeared  to  Brena  as  in 
finitely  more  sordid  than  the  squalor  of  slums  or 
the  crises  of  passionate  crimes.  That  she  was  a 
part  of  this  dull  brown  cheapness,  surrounded  by 
virtuous  and  smug  persons  who  lived  contentedly 
without  ideas  or  taste  in  a  round  of  interest  in  such 
things  as  strawberry  festivals,  new  hatst  pink 


The  Vanishing  Men          101 

celluloid  hair-receivers,  Sunday  newspapers,  half 
pounds  of  chocolates,  card  games,  etiquette,  napkin- 
rings,  the  domestic  lives  of  actresses  and  royalty, 
souvenir  spoons,  picture  postal  cards,  talking  ma 
chines,  baseball  scores,  spiritualism,  and  decorated 
sentiments  or  vulgarities  framed  for  the  wall,  was 
an  anomaly  like  planting  a  peony  among  the  cab 
bages. 

But  Brena,  conscious  of  this,  found  herself  won 
dering  whether  every  human  being  did  not  have  the 
feeling  that  he  or  she  was  a  gem  in  an  inferior 
setting.  Her  mother's  sense  of  humor  was  in  her 
and  she  saw  her  escape  not  by  fluttering  at  the 
walls  but  by  climbing  them.  Even  at  seventeen,  no 
doubt  her  face  had  begun  to  take  on  that  calm  of 
centuries  with  its  tenderness  and  patience  and  wist- 
fulness  and  understanding  as  if  she  carried  eternal 
hopes  and  bore  the  sufferings  of  all  mankind;  it 
was  only  her  mother's  sense  of  humor  that  thrust 
its  light  through  this  mountainous  and  heroic  ex 
pression.  Later  the  punctuation  of  fear,  expressed 
only  through  her  eyes,  had  become  a  characteristic 
interruption. 


IO2          The  Vanishing  Men 

Mrs.  Wilkie  often  mentioned  the  journey  to  St. 
Louis.  She  would  have  given  Brena  a  week's  board 
to  know  why  the  girl  had  gone,  but  even  Mrs.  Wilkie 
sensed  some  quality  in  this  beautiful  child  which 
made  her  a  creature  of  a  different  species  and  filled 
others  with  a  sense  of  awe  from  which  only  Jim 
Hennepin  had  been  exempt;  she  never  pressed  her 
questions  beyond  a  point  where  she  found  herself 
looking  into  the  wondering,  dark  Selcoss  eyes. 
Brena  kept  her  own  knowledge  without  an  effort; 
it  was  done  with  a  magnificent  restraint  and  with 
the  suggestion  that  she  who  until  that  year  had 
navigated  life  not  at  all  would  hereafter  navigate  it 
for  a  long  time  without  another's  hand  upon  the 
tiller. 

Brena  even  asked  twice  whether  Hennepin  had 
written.  She  chose  moments  when  the  two  other 
women  boarders  and  the  accountant  of  the  Southern 
Pacific  were  at  the  table. 

"Written!"  said  Mrs.  Wilkie  puckering  her  little 
mouth  as  if  she  were  going  to  whistle  her  sentence. 
"Written?  Not  he!  But  I  might  expect  that;  I 


The  Vanishing  Men          103 

have  never  found  that  I  could  expect  gratitude — 
from  anybody." 

She  looked  at  each  face  at  the  table  severely. 

"But  that's  nothing,"  she  added.  "His  own 
father  who  is  dying  of  Bright's  hasn't  heard  from 
him — not  for  three  months." 

"Oh,"  said  Brena  as  if  reflecting  and  weighing 
the  matter.  She  left  the  table  and  going  into  the 
front  room  she  played  in  lively  time  upon  the  piano 
there — a  piano  with  a  sheeny  red  case  and  with  a 
tone  intended  to  be  the  startling  opposite  of  the  tin- 
pan  attributes  of  old  pianos.  This  one  had  tones 
extravagantly  round  like  the  softness  of  an  elocu 
tionist  reading  poetry.  Brena  had  remembered  this 
piano  and  described  its  affectation.  It  was  nothing 
to  her  that  those  who  heard  her  play  on  it  said,  "Oh ! 
—She  makes  it  talk,"  for  they  were  the  same  per 
sons  who  said,  "What  beautiful  flowers!  They're 
like  wax!" 

Brena  at  the  piano  that  evening  felt  as  she  al 
ways  felt,  that  she  was  alone  in  her  world — the 
friend  of  certain  dogs  and  cats  which  lived  in  houses 
along  the  way  home  from  work.  She  had  grown 


IO4          The  Vanishing  Men 

accustomed  to  this  loneliness  and  was  nearly  con 
vinced  subconsciously  that  it  would  go  on  forever. 
Within  sight  there  was  nothing  which  might  break 
into  it  and  she  had  no  pangs  because  of  that.  She 
envied  no  one  unless  it  were  the  unidentified  young 
wife  who  lived  in  the  green  bungalow  on  the  corner 
of  Deering  Street  and  had  appeared  a  few  weeks 
before,  pale  and  transparent  and  smiling  with  a 
baby  in  her  arms.  Brena  set  her  face  toward  to 
morrows.  She  might  have  been  expected,  therefore, 
to  be  startled  when  the  past  broke  in  upon  her. 

It  came  in  the  form  of  Compton  Parmalee. 

Brena  had  been  writing  in  her  hot  room  under 
the  roof.  It  was  still  hot  although  the  Texas  Fall 
had  come  and  Brena  with  her  sleeves  rolled  back 
from  her  shapely  young  arms  with  their  cream- 
colored  skin  had  been  bending  over  her  little  table 
trying  to  set  down  in  the  form  of  a  written  drama 
the  story  of  the  one  other  girl  who  worked  now  in 
the  Porto  Rican  Embroidery  store.  The  story  was 
not  as  dramatic  a  story  as  it  may  have  appeared  to 
Brena  at  seventeen.  Nor  could  Brena  have  written 
a  play  because  she  had  no  knowledge  whatever  of 


The  Vanishing  Men          105 

the  craft  of  writing  plays,  which  she  later  found  out 
is  a  matter  of  skilled  carpentry  and  not  inspired, 
as  Brena  had  conceived  it.  For  all  of  this  she  now 
asks  to  be  forgiven  since  every  one,  usually  in  ex 
treme  youth,  writes  a  play  and  nearly  every  one,  as 
Brena,  startled  and  surprised  at  the  secret  labor, 
thrusts  the  manuscript  into  a  drawer  when  a  knock 
comes. 

It  was  Mrs.  Wilkie. 

"Well!"  she  said,  exploding  her  usual  astonish 
ment,  inquiry  and  disapproval  in  one  puffed  word. 

Brena  smiled. 

"You  better  put  yourself  to  rights!"  said  the  land 
lady,  holding  the  edge  of  the  varnished  yellow  door. 
"You  better  dress  your  best !  You've  got  a  caller." 

"To  see  me?" 

"Yes,  to  see  you.  And  such  a  caller!  It's  Mr. 
Parmalee !" 

Brena  stiffened.  She  asked :  "What  does  he  want 
to  see  me  for  ?" 

"I  don't  know,"  Mrs.  Wilkie  admitted.  "I  cer 
tainly  wish  I  did.  He  has  oodles  of  money!  He 


io6          The  Vanishing  Men 

speculated  during  this  year  and  he's  made  a  for 
tune!" 

"I  will  go  down  just  as  I  am,"  said  Brena  calmly 
and  firmly.  "I  do  not  care  about  his  fortune,  Mrs. 
Wilkie.  I  want  to  find  out  what  he  wants  of  me." 

Compton  Parmalee  did  not  appear  at  all  anxious 
to  say  what  he  wanted.  He  was  a  small,  wiry  man, 
careful  of  his  dress,  who  above  everything  else  was 
self-contained.  He  thrust  his  glances.  As  Brena 
Selcoss  came  in  the  door  he  thrust  a  glance  at  her 
and  then  looked  up  at  the  ceiling  as  if  his  mind 
was  digesting  that  which  his  gray  eyes  had  photo 
graphed.  As  she  came  toward  him  inquiringly  he 
rose,  thrust  another  glance  at  her  and  looked  out 
the  window  considering.  When  she  stopped  he 
thrust  once  more  and  sat  down  looking  at  the  carpet. 
Every  one  who  ever  knew  Compton  Parmalee  will 
remember  the  characteristic  inspection  of  that  dar 
ing  speculator. 

"Are  you  Miss  Selcoss?"  he  asked  as  if  now  that 
he  was  able  to  fasten  his  gaze  upon  her,  he  found 
it  improbable  that  the  girl  he  saw  in  all  her  fresh 
ness  of  youth  was  the  girl  he  had  come  to  see. 


The  Vanishing  Men          107 

""Yes,"  she  said. 

No  one  ever  understood  where  Parmalee  had 
acquired  the  judicial  manner  that  he  wore  around  his 
daring  as  one  wears  the  robes  of  an  office  for  which 
one  holds  no  title. 

He  had  come  to  Texas  from  the  desert  country 
of  Southern  California  when  he  was  twenty-six. 
He  knew  that  country  well.  In  his  years  in  Dallas, 
acting  as  a  cotton  commission  man  and  commodity 
gambler,  he  had  collected  a  large  and  valuable  library 
about  the  whole  historic  Southwest,  its  Indian  tribes, 
the  Pueblos,  the  strange  customs  and  secrets  of 
savage  men  carrying  some  of  the  traits  and  tradi 
tions  of  prehistoric  Aztecs,  and  the  Jesuit  mission 
aries.  It  was  said  by  some  persons  that  his  quiet 
ways  were  a  veneer  put  on  by  some  studious  years 
in  Berkeley  at  the  University,  but  rumor  had  it  that 
Parmalee  with  his  rather  pale,  young  face  that  made 
him  look  thirty  instead  of  forty-three,  his  small, 
well-shaped  hands,  his  immaculate  linen,  his  soft 
voice,  had  once  shot  a  man  across  a  roulette  table 
which  he  himself  owned  and  operated. 

That  he  was  ever  a  man  of  violence  is  very  doubt- 


io8          The  Vanishing  Men 

ful.  He  was  an  unquivering  gambler  but  not  with 
his  personal  safety ;  his  personal  safety  was  his  prin 
cipal  concern.  He  wore  gloves  on  all  occasions — 
to  keep  the  germs  off  his  hands ;  he  had  his  massive 
mahogany  desk,  in  the  office  building  across  from 
the  new  hotel,  wiped  down  every  morning  with  an 
antiseptic;  long  years  before  the  practice  had  be 
come  a  worthy  fashion  he  had  himself  examined 
periodically  by  specialists.  He  was  always  fearing 
contagion.  He  gargled.  He  snuffed.  He  sprayed. 
He  read  medical  journals.  He  feared  cancer  above 
all  other  things.  He  loved  his  life  so  much  that  he 
had  loved  no  woman  for  many  years ;  the  monopoly 
of  this  devotion  excluded  competition.  He  loved  his 
life  with  an  unending  passion;  he  ruined  it  by  fear 
ing  to  lose  it. 

This  was  the  man  who  withheld  his  questions, 
bided  his  time  and  gazed  at  Brena  Selcoss  with 
frank  admiration  on  his  absurdly  youthful  and 
academic  face.  He  turned  away  from  her,  walked 
to  the  window  and  looked  out  at  the  night,  at  the 
wall  of  the  neighboring  house  upon  which  the  light 
of  the  full  moon  was  bluish  white,  and  then  like  an 


The  Vanishing  Men          109 

actor  who  has  rehearsed  the  part  of  a  cool  and  col 
lected  man  he  walked  toward  Brena  and  said  clearly 
and  calmly,  "I've  come  for  information." 

He  could  not  see  the  slightest  quiver  in  the  girl's 
eyes,  though  he  looked  for  it. 

"Yes,"  said  he.    "May  I  close  this  door?" 

Mrs.  Wilkie,  who  was  outside  pretending  to  read 
the  names  in  the  telephone  book,  saw  the  front  room 
door  gently  swing  to  and  heard  the  latch. 

"How  old  are  you?"  Parmalee  was  asking  Brena. 

"Eighteen  this  month,"  she  said. 

"Well,  that's  surprising — very  indeed,"  he  said. 
"You  are  more  of  a  woman  than  a  girl." 

Brena  was  not  pleased  by  the  patronizing  manner 
of  this  rich  cotton  man.  She  said  promptly: 

"The  information  you  wanted?  Was  it  about 
me?" 

Parmalee  looked  up  with  a  single  sharp  thrust 
of  his  glance;  he  adjusted  his  tie  and  his  opinion 
of  Miss  Selcoss  at  one  time.  He  put  upon  his  un- 
wrinkled  clean-shaven  face  a  typical  ingratiating 
smile.  He  took  his  pointed  chin,  which  combined 
with  his  upslanting  eyebrows  to  give  him  a  satanic 


no          The  Vanishing  Men 

expression,  not  unpleasing,  in  his  small  white  cold 
hand. 

He  said :  "Oh,  no,  the  information  I  seek  is  about 
a  certain  man." 

She  glanced  around  her  quickly  as  if  to  be  sure 
that  no  one  else  had  come  with  him  and  was  sitting 
outside  the  circle  of  radiance  from  the  gas  mantle 
that  made  the  faces  of  human  beings  suddenly  turn 
livid  and  ghastly  as  Parmalee's  had  turned  and  as 
she  felt  her  own  had  turned. 

"Yes.  You  want  me  to  be  more  specific,"  he  said 
in  a  low  voice.  "I  will  be.  The  man  is " 

He  stopped,  simulating  perhaps  a  reluctance  to 
speak  the  name. 

Brena  held  her  breath. 

"Jim  Hennepin,"  he  said.  "An  employee  or  per 
haps  a  better  word  is  associate." 

Without  a  flutter  in  her  dark  eyes,  Brena  said : 

"Oh,  then  you  do  not  want  to  see  me — you  want 
to  see  Mr.  Hennepin's  aunt — Mrs.  Wilkie." 

Parmalee  shook  his  head  from  side  to  side.  "Per 
haps  wre'd  better  sit  down,"  he  suggested. 

Her  face  flushed  as  she  told  him  that  she  would 


The  Vanishing  Men          in 

prefer  to  stand,  but  he  only  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"Has  she  heard  from  him?"  he  asked.  "To 
day?" 

"No,"  said  Brena,  "she  hasn't  had  a  line  from 
him  since  he  left  Dallas.  There  isn't  anything — at 
the  office?" 

"No,  his  accounts  are  all  right,"  replied  Parmalee. 
"It  appears  that  you  are  anxious  on  that  point — in 
his  behalf.  Are  you  fond  of  him?" 

"Not  in  the  slightest."  Brena  answered  with  a 
voice  which  showed  no  emotion  whatever :  she  might 
have  been  asked  whether  she  liked  cold  raw  sliced 
tomatoes. 

"Well,  that's  surprising — very,  indeed,"  he  said 
with  a  thrust  of  his  glance.  "You  were  friendly?" 

"Yes,"  she  said.  "I  suppose  that  we  were  very 
friendly.  I  do  not  know  why  you  are  asking  me 
these  questions." 

"That  will  appear,"  he  said  gravely.  "You  will 
see  that  I  am  your  friend  in  this,  Miss  Selcoss.  I 
think  you  will  say  that  I  came  here  to  do  you  a 
service." 

For  just  a  flick  of  time  something  rose  from  the 


112          The  Vanishing  Men 

depths  of  Compton  Parmalee  and  Brena  saw  it.  It 
was  almost  an  effluvium  of  the  buried  best  in  him — 
the  stir  of  a  dying  thing  trying  to  come  to  life.  It 
was  half  a  benevolent  love  of  fellow  man:  half  the 
call  of  an  isolated,  warped  and  lonely  soul.  It  was 
the  thing  which  she  saw  later  and  to  which  she  gave 
in  her  folly,  but  now  it  flickered  for  a  moment  on 
that  strange  aesthetic  gambler's  face  and  was  gone. 

"You  telegraphed  to  Jim  Hennepin  from  St. 
Louis,"  he  said.  "That  telegram  was  opened." 

"When?"  asked  Brena.  "When  it  came?  Of 
course." 

He  did  not  deny  it.  He  said:  "It  was  just  your 
message,  'I  am  waiting/  and  it  was  signed,  'B'.  It 
took  a  little  inquiry  for  me  to  know  that  this  tele 
gram  was  probably  sent  by  you." 

"But  nearly  five  months  have  gone." 

"I  know." 

"And  why  now  do  you  come  to  me  ?" 

"You  needn't  tell  me  anything  you  do  not  wish 
to  tell.  I  assume  that  you  arranged  to  meet  him 
in  St.  Louis." 


The  Vanishing  Men          113 

Brena  put  her  hand  up  and  felt  her  throat.  It 
was  hot — the  skin  was  hot  under  her  cold  hand. 

"It  was  a  great  mistake,"  she  said  in  a  low  voice, 
" — a  great  mistake." 

"The  idea  was  marriage?" 

"It  was  my  idea — if  I  had  any  clear  idea." 

"You  were  very  young." 

"Yes,  I  think  so — looking  back." 

"You  know  now  what  was  in  Jim  Hennepin's 
mind?" 

She  did  not  answer. 

"The  dirty  dog !"  said  Parmalee.  "What  a  smil 
ing  face  he  had !" 

Brena  shuddered. 

"Well,  here  is  the  telegram,"  said  the  visitor.  "I 
opened  it  myself.  There  is  no  one  else  who  knows 
it  was  ever  sent." 

He  wet  his  thin  lips;  he  said: 

"It  is  a  secret — ours,"  and  stretched  out  his  hand 
with  the  yellow  envelope  held  daintily  in  his 
fingers. 

The  girl,  however,  was  looking  searchingly  into 
his  eyes;  she  was  young  but  not  too  young  to  be 


114          The  Vanishing  Men 

suspicious  of  a  secret  shared  by  two,  when  one  treats 
that  secret  as  if  it  were  a  kind  of  asset. 

Apparently  he  read  her  thoughts,  for  he  said 
hurriedly,  "You  needn't  feel  under  any  obligation 
to  me  for  keeping  that  secret.  I  have  my  stains  and 
blights  but  they  are  not  of  that  kind.  As  I  said 
all  I  came  for  was  information." 

She  took  the  telegram  which  he  had  held  toward 
her  and  nodded. 

"Of  course,  if  he  were  to  meet  you  he  probably 
told  you  more.  He  probably  told  you  where  he  was 
going,  eh — and  why?" 

He  leaned  forward  as  he  asked  this  question  and 
turned  one  side  of  his  face  as  if  the  answer  could 
best  be  heard  by  his  right  ear  alo»e. 

"No,"  she  said.  "He  spoke  of  making  a  great 
sum  of  money,  of  getting  it  from  some  place." 

"He  did  not  say  where?" 

"No." 

Parmalee  sighed  as  if  he  had  gone  up  a  blind 
alley  and  had  found  its  end. 

"He  spoke  of  some  call — some  message,"  said 
Brena. 


The  Vanishing  Men          115 

The  broker's  eyes  widened  until  they  were  in  a 
staring  distention. 

"Ha!    So  he  did!    What  did  he  tell  you?" 

"Nothing." 

Parmalee  sat  down  in  a  chair  and  stared  at  the 
carpet  for  a  long  time. 

"It  is  very  peculiar,"  he  said  at  last.  "He  left 
you  to  meet  him  in  St.  Louis.  He  went  on  an 
errand  of  some  strange  kind  and  refused  to  tell  you 
what  it  was.  Well!  Well!  And  then  you  waited 
in  St.  Louis — in  vain." 

"How  did  you  know  he  didn't  come?" 

"Your  telegram." 

Brena  said:  "I  was  there  three  days.  I  waited. 
I  was  frightened.  But  I  grew  more  in  those  three 
days  than  I  have  ever  grown  before  in  three  years." 

"Yes,"  said  Parmalee  with  a  flicker  of  tenderness 
again.  "I  can  understand." 

"You  have  heard  no  word  from  him  since?" 

"No  word.  And  I  thought  that  it  might  be  my 
duty  to  tell " 

"No,  no,  no!"  exclaimed  the  man,  jumping  up. 
"If  there  is  any  duty  in  the  world  it  is  not  to  tell. 


n6          The  Vanishing  Men 

Few  would  ever  understand — as  I  understand.  It 
would  do  no  good.  If  I  can  do  nothing,  what  pur 
pose  would  it  serve  for  you  to  try?  For  God's 
sake  think  of  yourself." 

"And  I  promised  him,"  she  said.  "What  differ 
ence  does  it  make  that  I  see  clearly  now  what  a 
man  he  is — my  promise  to  keep  silent." 

"Quiet!"  commanded  Parmalee.  "Not  so  loud. 
No  purpose  is  served  by  stirring  up  a  search." 

"A  search?  You  mean  that  you  do  not  know 
where  he  is,  Mr.  Parmalee?" 

The  broker  lowered  his  voice :  "Yes,"  said  he. 
"Not  only  have  you  and  Mrs.  Wilkie  heard  nothing 
and  his  father  heard  nothing,  but  I  have  heard 
nothing.  Apparently  after  he  had  decided  to  take 
you  away  from  Dallas  this  thing  described  as  a  call 
came." 

"Yes." 

"There  is  still  a  balance  of  a  considerable  sum  to 
his  credit  in  the  office.  I  will  tell  you  confidentially 
that  he  has  not  claimed  it.  As  far  as  I  can  find  out 
no  man,  woman  or  child  for  nearly  half  a  year  has 
seen  Jim  Hennepin.  No  one  misses  him  to  be  sure. 


The  Vanishing  Men          117 

And  for  you  to  sacrifice  yourself — that  would  be 
utter  folly!    He  has  gone — like  this!" 

Parmalee  held  up  his  small  clenched  fist,  opened 
it  suddenly  and  blew  an  imaginary  speck  of  dust 
from  its  palm  into  oblivion. 


VIII 

MIDWINTER  had  come  before  Brena  saw  Comptoti 
Parmalee  again.  He  sent  for  her  two  days  after 
Christmas;  he  asked  if  she  could  come  to  his  office. 

The  call  had  come  over  the  telephone  to  the 
store  where  she  was  still  employed  and  Brena  an 
swered  that  she  would  try  to  leave  an  hour  earlier 
than  usual  so  that  she  could  come  at  four. 

Winter  dusk  had  begun  to  settle  over  the  city 
before  she  was  shown  into  the  broker's  inner  office 
by  a  stenographer,  who,  never  having  seen  a  woman 
caller  before,  raised  her  eyebrows  as  she  closed 
the  door  after  the  entrance  of  this  beautiful  stranger. 
Through  the  great  plate  glass  windows  of  the  luxu 
rious  office  Brena  could  see  the  flaming  sunset  in 
the  West  and  against  it,  in  dark  outline,  the  figure 
of  Parmalee  who  had  risen  as  she  had  come  in. 

With  a  gesture  of  gallantry  he  took'  her  furs 
from  her  and  put  them  across  the  white  papers  on 

118 


The  Vanishing  Men          119 

his  desk  and  when  she  sat  down  he  touched  these 
furs  caressingly  for  several  moments.  He  might 
have  been  thrusting  his  glances  at  her,  but  she  could 
not  tell.  Dusk  had  entered  the  office,  too,  and  he 
became  only  a  figure  of  two  dimensions,  without 
thickness,  from  which  after  a  moment  there  came 
a  voice  which  Brena  scarcely  recognized,  so  weary 
was  it  and  yet  so  unrelaxed  and  tense. 

"You  are  sure  that  all  you  told  me  was  accurate," 
he  said. 

She  needed  no  explanation ;  she  said  at  once,  "Of 
course,"  in  a  tone  of  indignation. 

"I  know,"  said  he.  "But  there  was  just  one  more 
thing.  Did  he  leave  a  paper  with  you?" 

"A  paper?  No,  he  left  no  paper.  He  gave 
me " 

She  hesitated  and  went  on.  "He  gave  me  some 
money  and  there  was  a  little  scrap  of  paper  in  it. 
I  remember  because  I  did  not  know  whether  to  keep 
it  or  throw  it  away.  He  might  have  wanted  it.  It 
had  on  it  an  arrow  drawn  with  ink  and  a  lizard 
drawn  beside  it  and  two  words  underneath,  'This 
sign/  " 


I2O         The  Vanishing  Men 

"Well,  that  was  nothing,"  said  Parmalee.  "Where 
is  it  now?" 

"It  disappeared.     You  haven't " 

"No.     Not  a  word.     He  has  gone." 

She  was  silent. 

"In  fact,  it  was  not  because  of  anything  to  do  with 
it  that  I  wanted  to  see  you,"  the  man  said.  "You 
will  say  when  you  know  why  I  sent  for  you  that 
you  have  never  heard  of  anything  like  it  in  all  your 
life." 

Brena  sat  down. 

"Did  you  ever  hear  of  a  man  who  had  made  a  final 
killing — who  a  year  ago  was  juggling  riches  and 
insolvency  in  one  hand  and  success  or  failure  in  the 
other,  wanting  to  talk  about  himself  to  an  eighteen- 
year-old  orphan?" 

"No,"  she  said  with  a  little  laugh.  "I  never 
heard  of  that." 

"I  sent  for  you  to  tell  you  about  myself — not 
about  what  I  have  been — but  about  what  I  am.  I 
did  this  after  having  seen  you  once  and  once  only. 
It  is  because  there  was  a  sympathy  between  us  that 
was  most  extraordinary — more  than  you  know." 


The  Vanishing  Men          121 

"I  think  I  understand." 

"It  is  not  love,"  said  he.  "Let  me  make  it  plain 
that  I  am  not  deluded,  that  I  am  not  in  love  with 
you.  You  will  never  hear  me  talking  about  the 
love  of  youth.  I  am  not  old,  but  the  passion  and 
idealism  of  love  have  gone — worn  out  perhaps  in 
taking  risks  and  jarring  to  pieces  within  while  like 
a  carved  marble  on  the  outside.  No,  I  will  not  make 
love  to  you." 

"No,"  said  Brena  giving  affirmation. 

He  played  with  the  furs  a  little  more. 

"Ten  months  ago  I  scraped  together  all  the 
money  I  could  and  I  threw  it  into  a  final  play. 
That's  neither  here  nor  there.  I  am  now  worth  a 
little  over  two  million  dollars,  I  am  through  with 
business,  with  trading,  with  speculation,  with  this 
office,  and  with  Dallas,  Texas — forever!" 

"And  now ?"  asked  Brena. 

He  laughed.  "That  is  it!— What?"  The  fur 
stole  on  the  desk  in  front  of  him  he  smoothed  gently 
with  his  open  hand.  Brena  made  no  suggestion  as 
to  what  he  should  do  with  his  life,  and  after  a 
moment  he  went  on,  "There  is  left  to  me  now  col- 


122          The  Vanishing  Men 

lecting  books,  travel,  perhaps  an  opportunity  to  do 
some  one  a  kindness  now  and  then  and  taking  good 
care  of  my  health.  I  shall  buy  a  painting  occasion 
ally.  Can  you  think  of  anything  else?" 

To  Brena  the  problem  was  new ;  she  did  not  have 
a  ready  answer. 

"I  have  burned  out,"  said  Parmalee.  "I  am 
ashes." 

Of  this  he  spoke  cheerfully  as  if  he  had  repeated 
it  over  and  over  to  himself  until  it  had  lost  its 
blackness  and  now  gave  the  strange  pleasure  that 
all  final  conclusions  of  human  limitations  and  disas 
ters  give  at  last  when  they  are  accepted. 

"You  see  I  am  not  a  great  man,"  he  explained. 
"It  was  necessary  for  me  to  throw  all  of  myself 
into  the  fight — every  resource  I  could  summon.  I 
do  not  smoke.  I  know  as  much  about  smoking  as 
any  man  alive.  I  have  measured  its  effect  with 
accuracy.  It  is  a  greater  devitalizer  than  alcohol. 
But  I  do  not  drink,  either.  I  have  conserved  and 
guarded  all  my  sensations  until  I  have  none.  All 
my  life — my  last  twenty  years  of  life — I  have  prom 
ised  myself  indulgences — indulgences  of  gigantic 


The  Vanishing  Men          123 

and  exquisite  design,  but  now  that  I  can  have  them, 
this  body  of  mine  rejects  them  all,  refuses  them  all 
Fate  laughs  in  my  ear  and  says,  'You're  done  for. 
The  most  sensuous  pleasure  you  shall  have  will  be 
the  flavor  of  that  apple  sauce  you  have  eaten  for 
lunch  for  fifteen  years  and  will  eat  for  lunch  for 
the  rest  of  your  days.'  Isn't  this  a  grim  joke,  Miss 
Selcoss?" 

"I  do  not  know,"  said  Brena  uneasily. 

Even  in  the  dark  he  sensed  her  desire  to  go. 

"Don't  leave  me,"  he  said  with  a  voice  which 
almost  broke  into  a  low  sob.  "You  are  the  only 
one  who  can  understand." 

"All  right,"  she  said,  astonished  that  she  had 
become  important  to  any  one.  "I'm  sorry,  Mr.  Par- 
malee." 

"Let  me  tell  you  something  else,"  he  went  on.  "I 
have  dreamed  of  a  certain  prestige — a  kind  of 
background  of  life  that  I  would  enjoy  when  I  was 
ready.  To  that  end  I  have  given  liberally  to  cam 
paign  funds.  Next  year  if  I  wish  I  can  be  Minister 
to  Portugal.  Personally  I  think  this  is  a  grim  jest. 
It  is  the  system,  however." 


124          The  Vanishing  Men 

Brena  clasped  her  ungloved  hands  in  her  lap  and 
thrust  her  arms  out  until  it  appeared  that  she  was 
expressing  something  of  the  thrill  of  imagination 
which  the  picture  of  diplomatic  life  in  a  European 
capital  had  given  her. 

"But  I  shall  not  take  the  office,"  said  Parmalee. 

Brena  uttered  an  exclamation. 

"No,  I  shall  not  take  it.  I  do  not  want  more  bril 
liance.  I  want  more  dim  light.  I  like  the  dusk. 
I  do  nol  want  to  see  my  name  in  printed  letters.  I 
never  want  to  see  it  again.  I  do  not  want  men  and 
women  to  say,  'That  is  Compton  Parmalee.'  I 
want  all  strangers  to  neglect  me.  I  want  to  live  in 
a  dim  light — like  this — now  in  this  office." 

He  sighed. 

"I've  made  many  mistakes/'  he  said.  "I  want 
now  to  become  buried,  to  be  unseen — like  a  ghost." 

Brena  protested;  she  said,  "No,  no,  you  don't 
want  that." 

Parmalee  did  not  answer  and  the  silence  and  the 
dusk  invited  the  girl  to  speak. 

"There  are  so  many  things  you  can  buy  with  your 
money,"  she  said. 


The  Vanishing  Men          125 

"Only  one,"  he  replied  sharply. 

"And  that " 

"Is  you." 

She  pushed  her  chair  back  from  the  desk  with 
both  her  hands. 

"You  need  not  be  alarmed,"  said  his  calm  voice. 
"I  have  stated  it  purposely  at  its  worst.  It  is  better 
for  you  to  have  this  thought  presented  at  first  and 
perhaps  we  can  overcome  it  later.  I  put  it  in  the 
terms  the  world  will  use;  Dallas  will  say,  'He 
bought  her.'  But,  after  all,  we  will  not  be  in  Dallas. 
We  will  be  in  Pekin  or  in  Bombay  or  in  sight  of  the 
Pyramids  or  in  the  crags  of  the  Norway  coast.  1 
am  more  than  twenty  years  older  than  you  are.  But 
the  varied  and  interesting  and  important  persons 
with  whom  we  may  dine  will  only  say,  'He  has  a 
beautiful  young  wife  with  a  free  mind.  Her  father 
was  a  patriot  of  Greece.' ' 

"You  know " 

"All  that  I  could  about  you,"  said  Parmalee. 

"But  it  has  been  a  long  time/'  Brena  said,  as  if 
cross-examination  might  bring  clarity  to  displace 
her  puzzled  mind.  "You  did  not •" 


126          The  Vanishing  Men 

"Come  back?"  he  asked.    "No." 

Outside  the  plate  glass  window  the  rising  wind 
tuned  mournfully. 

"You  are  very  young,"  he  said.  "You  would  not 
foresee  as  I  foresaw  that  I  could  not  see  you  with 
out  starting  the  tongues  of  scandal.  You  are  penni 
less,  young,  working.  I  am  rich,  worldly,  conspicu 
ous.  I  should  have  liked  to  send  you  extravagant 
presents.  You  would  not  have  understood.  You 
would  have  thought  I  was  an  old  fool  trying  to  be 
a  lover.  I  was  not  that,  but  the  others  would  have 
said  even  worse  of  me.  So  I  waited,  clinging  to  a 
single  strand  that  brings  us  together." 

"Us!" 

"Yes — sympathy.  Because  you  saw  in  me  the 
one  thing  left  that  you  might  salvage  and  find  valu 
able.  Not  because  I  am  a  man  and  you  are  a 
woman,  but  because  I  am  a  human  being  and  you, 
who  can  see  with  a  vision  of  the  gods,  saw  in  my 
ashes  one  unburned  thing." 

"You  knew!" 

"Yes,  I  knew,"  he  said  sadly.  "No  one  else  could 
see.  Underneath  there  is  something  left — a  kind 


The  Vanishing  Men          127 

of  tenderness  for  humanity.  It  is  to  fan  this  spark 
that  I  want  to  buy  you." 

Brena  said  nothing;  he  had  made  good  his  prom 
ise  that  he  would  tell  her  something  she  had  never 
heard  of  before. 

"I  do  not  want  a  wife,"  he  said.  "That  would 
be  the  title,  but  I  do  not  want  a  wife.  It  j,s  too  late. 
I  want  a  mother.  I  want  you  to  make  my  spirit 
clean  and  white  as  it  was  when  I  was  ten." 

"And  yet,"  said  Brena,  "you  do  not  think  of  me." 

Suddenly  this  unhappy  man  rose  to  his  feet 
trembling,  intense,  gesticulating. 

"Think  of  you,"  he  said.  "How  can  you  say 
that  I  have  not  thought  of  you?  Is  this  thing  I 
propose  so  unnatural  as  the  foolish  world  has  said 
of  it?  Is  it  base  of  me  to  want  to  take  a  diamond 
from  the  mud  where  no  one  else  has  seen  it?  Is 
it  an  ugly  thought  that  I  feel  repulsion  when  I  see 
you,  who  are  made  of  the  rarest  materials,  wasted 
upon  cheap  labors  and  cheap  garish  surroundings 
and  being  worn  down  like  a  fine,  wonderful  machine, 
abused  by  coarse  use?  Am  I  a  fool  to  believe  that 
with  the  only  contacts  available  to  you,  you  will  only 


128          The  Vanishing  Men 

meet  the  vulgar  men  you  can  never  marry?  Did  I 
not  see  that  you  had  a  vision  as  from  Olympic 
heights  which  was  being  blinded  in  this  routine  of 
middle-class  horrors?" 

Brena's  face,  upon  which  the  last  light  fell,  was 
white  and  frightened  as  if  she  had  seen  a  ghost. 
It  was  enough  to  tell  him  that  she  knew  that  he 
spoke  truly. 

"I  do  not  ask  you  to  give  anything  to  me  except 
your  help  to  make  me  new  again,"  he  said.  "I  do 
not  ask  young  love.  I  have  none  to  give.  I  cannot 
take  you  away  or  keep  you  near  me  without  mar 
riage.  It  would  blast  us  both.  But  if  you  marry  me 
you  shall  be  made  free  whenever  the  day  comes  that 
you  wish  to  go.  I  ask  no  promises." 

Brena  got  up  and  stood  looking  out  the  window. 
The  tall  office  building  overlooked  not  only  the  old 
center  of  the  city  and  the  red  angular  prisms  of 
brick  and  the  square  roofs  laid  out  like  fields  upon 
level  farmland,  but  also  the  distant  stretches  of 
rolling  prairies.  There  was  an  impulse  to  go  over 
that  distant  horizon:  the  same  strong  impulse  of 
youth,  adventure,  ambition  that  runs  like  a  current 


The  Vanishing  Men          129 

in  the  blood  of  animals  and  men.  To  be  free!  To 
grow !  To  range !  To  know !  To  be  emancipated 
from  the  sordid  round  of  days! 

"Do  not  answer  now,"  said  Parmalee.  "I  have 
said  all  I  can.  It  has  taken  me  several  weeks  to 
plan  how  I  should  say  this.  I  have  said  it  all  in  a 
cold,  fair  statement.  No  one  could  say  I  had  made 
love  to  you,  Brena." 

She  took  his  hand ;  it  was  as  cold  as  ice. 

"Write  me,"  said  he  brusquely. 

A  week  later  he  got  her  letter :  it  was  on  his  desk 
apart  from  the  business  envelopes.  He  tore  it 
open. 

"Nothing  you  said  to  me  can  be  denied,"  she 
wrote.  "You  have  inquired  about  me;  I  have  no 
hesitation  in  telling  you  that  I  have  inquired  about 
you.  I  do  not  feel  that  I  have  gained  anything 
by  my  inquiry,  for  it  is  true  that  there  comes  to  me 
at  strange  moments  a  clear  vision  and  an  insight. 
I  think  you  are  above  all  honorable." 

Parmalee  must  have  uttered  an  exclamation  of 
triumph;  he  alone  knew  that  she  was  wrong. 

"I  want  to  make  my  life  of  greater  service  than 


130          The  Vanishing  Men 

it  can  ever  be  here.  I  am  impatient  for  a  richer 
soil  in  which  to  grow.  I  am  willing  to  help  you,  too, 
if  I  can.  It  seems  a  little  vague  to  me  how  I  can  do 
this  and  yet,  though  I  am  very  young,  I  can  live  in 
you — I  cai?  feel  all  that  you  feel  and  I  can  see  the 
better  part  of  you." 

He  probably  thrust  a  glance  at  the  letter  apd 
looked  up  with  that  satanic  chin  and  upslanting 
eyes  turned  toward  the  ceiling  and  with  the  judicial 
smile  upon  his  mouth.  He  read  on. 

"Therefore  I  assent  to  your  plan  as  you  stated  it. 
Always  yours,  Brena  Selcoss." 

Parmalee,  no  doubt,  said  to  himself  that  this  was 
no  ordinary  letter  from  the  hand  of  a  girl  not 
older  than  eighteen,  the  brevity  and  the  calm  of  it 
were  symbolized  somewhat  by  the  direct  and  grace 
ful  handwriting  which,  with  breadth  of  line  and 
easy  flow,  none  the  less  stood  architecturally  upon 
the  page. 

They  were  married  one  evening  at  8  o'clock  in 
the  same  room  in  which  he  had  first  seen  her.  Mrs. 
Wilkie  was  glad  to  have  her  "home"  as  she  called 
it  the  center  of  an  unscheduled  social  event  which 


The  Vanishing  Men          131 

would  start  all  the  tongues  when  it  was  in  the 
News  the  next  morning.  This  was  the  nearest 
she  could  come  to  the  adventure  of  a  duchess  and 
she  was  willing  to  have  the  flurry  in  her  life.  It 
would  be  she  who  would  give  out  the  interviews  and 
explain  grandly  over  the  telephone.  They — the 
two — would  be  on  their  way  to  that  fairy  world  of 
money  and  travel  and  airs  and  graces  which  had 
opened  its  arms  to  this  fated  young  beauty.  The 
girl  would  leave  all  her  old  life  and  its  worn  dresses 
and  cheap  shoes  behind — all  but  one  thing  perhaps, 
and  that  would  be  the  picture  of  the  Acropolis  in 
its  battered  frame.  The  fortune  that  had  befallen 
Brena  had  been  the  very  reality  of  all  of  Mrs. 
Wilkie's  life-long  dreams,  but  she  considered  that 
for  herself,  there  would  be  certain  crumbs  fallen 
from  the  table.  She  caught  her  breath:  she  had 
almost  lost  it  when  she  had  learned  from  Parmalee 
that  he  was  giving  the  bride  a  check  for  one  hun 
dred  thousand  dollars. 

Not  fifteen  minutes  had  elapsed  after  the  mar 
riage  before  there  came  into  the  lives  of  the  two  a 
new  element. 


132          The  Vanishing  Men 

They  had  been  whirled  to  the  station  and  were 
strolling  up  and  down  as  casually  as  if  he  were 
dictating  to  a  young  secretary  the  last  memoranda  of 
a  deal  in  cotton. 

Little  by  little  his  conversation  fell  away;  he 
muttered  a  few  last  absent-minded  words  and  it 
was  gone  altogether.  He  walked  on ;  she  kept  pace 
with  him.  He  walked  on  in  silence. 

Not  until  she  heard  a  strange  whiffling  noise  as  a 
sudden  sucking  in  of  breath  of  one  who  has  fainted 
did  she  turn. 

"You  are  as  white  as  linen,"  she  said  trembling. 

He  wet  his  lips  and  looked  at  her  almost  snarling. 

"What  is  this  fate  that  follows  you?"  he  asked. 

"Fate?" 

"Something." 

"Why?  What  do  you  feel?"  she  asked  in  a 
frightened  whisper. 

"I  feel  fear,"  he  said,  his  upper  lip  fluttering,  "a 
horrible,  unaccountable  terror." 


IX 


THE  extraordinary  transition  in  Compton  Parma- 
lee  began  with  his  marriage. 

Apparently  an  inexplicable  fear  had  seized  him 
within  a  few  minutes;  inexplicable  fear  little  by 
little  took  possession  of  his  life  and  made  him  a 
source  of  the  contagion  of  unreasoning  dread. 

There  was  a  six-month  period  after  the  departure 
of  the  strange  bride  from  Dallas  wherein,  whatever 
emotions  of  apprehension  he  may  have  felt,  a 
struggle  was  made  to  conceal  them  and  to  fulfill 
his  bargain  to  give  Brena  Selcoss  the  variety,  con 
tent  and  luxury  that  he  had  said  should  be  hers. 
He,  who  never  had  more  than  touched  her  hand  with 
his  own  cold,  refined  fingers,  sometimes  burst  forth 
with  all  the  zealous  energy  he  had  put  into  his  specu 
lations  and  with  all  the  assurance  in  his  own  mystic 
powers  of  foresight  which  had  made  him  a  great 
gambler. 

133 


134          The  Vanishing  Men 

"You  are  my  speculation  now!"  he  would  ex 
claim.  "I  have  bought  a  future  in  you!" 

Brena  would  stare  back  at  him,  her  great  dark 
eyes  questioning  and  full  of  doubt. 

"You  think  I  have  done  badly  ?  No.  It  was  my 
one  great  inspiration.  You  have  the  body  and  the 
health  of  one  among  thousands.  You  are  so  beauti 
ful  with  the  beauty  of  eternal  things  that  even  I 
who  will  not  touch  your  cheek  can  feel  the  same 
thrill  of  pleasure  that  one  may  feel  gazing  upon  a 
Praxiteles." 

She  had  said,  "Not  Phidias,  then?" 

"Yes,  Phidias — a  work  of  Phidias!  Because 
there  is  not  only  your  carved  limbs  and  neck  and 
hands  but  something  sublime  as  well.  Beneath  your 
warm  and  velvety  surface  like  the  texture  of  flower 
petals  there  is  a  wonderful  mind,  and  a  spirit 
which  has  come  down  through  eternities  with  im 
mortal  life." 

"You  are  an  eloquent  man,"  the  young  girl  had 
said,  with  a  quirk  upon  her  lips  suggestive  of  her 
mother.  "Your  tongue  is  as  silvery  as  those  of  my 
Irish  ancestors." 


The  Vanishing  Men          135 

"Do  you  think  I  shall  regret  that  I  have  played 
a  part  in  your  growth?"  he  had  asked,  with  one  of 
his  short  laughs.  "I  shall  not  be  more  to  you  than 
I  am  now.  How  can  I  use  you,  eh?  How  could 
I  use  my  money  ?  I  deluded  myself  once.  I  thought 
I  wanted  it  for  myself.  But  you?  I  do  not  want 
you  for  myself.  I  only  want  your  capacity  as  a 
woman  to  be  filled  to  the  brim !" 

He  lived  two  lives;  not  at  the  same  time,  but 
alternately.  The  one  was  in  her;  the  other  in  him 
self.  When  he  could  put  his  own  life  into  hers  he 
forgot  his  own.  He  became  that  being  whose 
warmth  and  light  she  had  seen  beneath  the  cold  steel 
shell  of  an  unremitting  fighter  and  plunger,  whose 
singleness  of  purpose  and  will  had  found  dynamic 
concentration  in  his  spare  body  and  had  expressed 
themselves  in  a  mask  of  cruelty  and  craft  upon  a 
face  otherwise  aesthetic  and  sensitive.  At  these 
times  his  countenance  wore  that  abnormal  youth  of 
feature  which  was  his  most  marked  personal  char 
acteristic.  It  was  only  upon  rare  occasions  that  it 
was  twisted  up  as  if  in  a  cramp  of  anxiety;  as  if 
some  distant  but  menacing  forecast  had  pointed  a 


136         The  Vanishing  Men 

finger  at  him  from  afar.  For  a  moment  he  forgot 
her;  for  a  moment  he  had  been  immersed  in  his 
self. 

For  more  than  half  a  year,  in  Paris,  in  Budapest, 
in  Petrograd,  in  London,  this  one  of  the  two  lives 
of  Compton  Parmalee  was  dominant.  Something 
of  the  youth  and  the  calm  of  Brena's  eyes,  looking 
out  upon  a  world  which  opened  all  its  doors  to  her 
expectant  inquiry,  was  reflected  in  his  own. 

By  manipulation  of  acquaintance  and,  when  neces 
sary,  by  lavish  expenditure,  he  procured  her  entry 
into  rare  social  circumferences.  In  that  first  year 
Brena,  considered  by  all  strangers  to  be  several 
years  older  than  she,  in  fact,  was,  and  of  whom  no 
one  would  have  believed  it  if  it  had  been  told  them 
that  she  had  been  plucked  out  of  that  kitchen  garden 
of  Wilkie's  boarding  house,  the  Porto  Rican  Shop, 
the  movies,  and  a  sordid  sickly-brown  provincialism, 
had  dined  with  foreign  ambassadors,  hunted  with 
Lady  Tremayn  Nash,  been  courted  over,  through 
and  under  her  disgust  by  a  cousin  of  the  ex-King  of 
the  Portuguese,  occupied  a  villa  in  the  Italian  lakes 
and  voyaged  in  a  luxurious  yacht  around  the  Baltic 


The  Vanishing  Men          137 

in  midsummer  with  the  family  of  Stockholm's  larg 
est  banker.  With  the  credit  of  admiration  that  her 
natural  poise,  her  beauty,  her  talent  as  a  linguist, 
her  mother's  wit  and  her  father's  love  of  learning 
had  brought  her  everywhere,  she  was  not  dazzled  in 
the  slightest  degree. 

When  Parmalee,  in  Berlin,  said  to  her  for- 
givably  exulting,  "Thus  we  work  our  miracle! 
In  November  you  are  taking  your  laundry  to  the 
Chinaman's  in  Harvey  Street;  in  March  you  wear 
thirty  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  emeralds  to  con 
trast  with  that  crown  of  red-gold  hair  at  a  ball  in 
the  Chateau  de  Pontemori,"  she  said : 

"The  leap  is  no  great  one.  There  is  a  hair's 
breadth  of  difference  between  the  frauds  of  this 
world  and  the  pretenses  of  that.  I  rather  think  I  am 
the  same  Brena." 

"But  growing!"  said  he  as  a  horticulturist  would 
speak. 

"Yes,  growing,"  said  Brena  with  a  sigh. 

Other  men,  sensing  subconsciously  her  ungiven 
and  unused  affections,  brought  all  their  sophistica 
tion  to  their  aid  in  making  love  to  her.  She  com- 


138          The  Vanishing  Men 

bined  the  classic  beauty  of  the  Greek  goddess  with 
the  illusive  shimmering  charm  of  her  Irish  blood; 
dozens  of  men  in  various  capitals  noting  it,  as  Peter 
DeWolfe  marked  it  down  later,  gave  amusement 
to  the  Dallas  broker  and  annoyance  to  her.  She 
said  that  she  might  have  been  thrilled  by  these 
idolatries  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  they  always 
came  either  from  those  whose  attentions  to  women 
were  quite  general  and  successive  or  from  those 
whose  imagination  could  conceive  only  a  very  plain 
driveway  from  the  thoroughfare  of  formal  society 
to  the  sequestered  dwelling  place  of  a  woman's 
heart. 

"You  are  rather  tired,"  Parmalee  said  to  her 
once. 

"At  first  my  breath  was  taken  away  as  if  I  were 
an  aviator  up  alone  for  the  first  time.  But  now  the 
flight  is  rather  monotonous.  It  is  as  if  it  were  done 
only  for  spectators.  It  has  no  destination." 

He  thrust  a  glance  at  her  and  looked  up  at  the 
ceiling  of  the  railway  carriage,  reflecting.  As  usual 
he  understood. 

"You  rather  want  to  produce  something." 


The  Vanishing  Men          139 

She  nodded.  "But  I  do  not  want  to  appear  un 
grateful,"  she  added,  speaking  as  one  might  speak 
to  an  impresario  rather  than  as  one  speaks  to  a  hus 
band. 

"Not  at  all,"  said  he,  hitting  out  squarely  with 
his  pungent  frankness.  "That's  all  right.  I've  been 
stupid.  You  are  too  big  to  be  satisfied  with  this 
low-neck  nonsense.  It  is  not  enough  to  be  the 
wearer  of  a  gleaming  skin  in  the  magnificence  of 
authorized  exposure.  You  want- 
He  stopped. 

"What  do  I  want?" 

"Either  love,  man,  children  or  else  labor,  output, 
self-assertion,  a  product,  a  separate  personality 
standing  on  its  two  legs  alone." 

Brena  said,  "I  have  an  idea  that  no  woman  quite 
knows  whether  she  wants  both  or  can  have  both  or 
can  choose  or  stick  to  either.  Whatever  happens 
there  is  always  the  haunting  desire  for  more  of  the 
other  thing." 

"I  know,"  said  he,  looking  at  her  with  brimming 
eyes.  "It  is  the  tragedy  of  big  women." 

Not  only  because  of  his  words,  but  equally  be- 


140         The  Vanishing  Men 

cause  of  the  self-effacement,  the  sympathy  that  he 
at  moments  could  cast  down  from  some  calm 
eminence  which  his  spirit  had  learned  to  climb,  Brena 
always  remembered  this  moment  as  that  which 
marked  the  best  in  him,  as  that  which  justified  the 
bargain  she  had  made  to  salvage  that  better  part. 

The  contest  between  that  better  part  and  the  other 
— the  well-known  Compton  Parmalee  with  his  ruth 
less  daring  instinct  for  hazards  and  his  almost 
frantic  interest  in  self-preservation — was  a  losing 
fight  for  Brena.  She  knew,  as  he  knew,  that  her 
power  lay  in  no  words,  but  only  in  the  threads  of 
understanding,  conduct  and  high  aims  that  she  could 
weave  with  him  into  his  life.  Moments  had  come 
when  she  had  even  believed  that  if  she  had  won  she 
might  have  loved  him.  The  things  worth  saving  in 
him  were  so  rare !  She  would  have  thrown  herself 
into  a  new  labor — the  reclamation  of  his  youth. 

It  was  not  to  be.  Perhaps  he  himself  knew  this 
as  he  felt  slipping  from  him  the  power  to  resist  the 
habits  of  mind  of  years  of  fierce  avarice  and  the 
passionate  love  of  his  own  welfare  and  his  own  life. 
He  spoke  no  word  of  this  realization  to  Brena. 


The  Vanishing  Men  141 

After  all,  the  two  were  far  apart,  and  the  girl  only 
sensed,  as  one  who  hears  a  low  murmur  of  a  com 
ing  tempest,  the  menace  which  hung  over  them. 

"There  are  times  when  you  look  at  me  as  if  I 
were  the  bearer  of  some  evil,"  she  said. 

"It  is  absurd,"  he  told  her,  but  his  face  had  shown 
the  sudden  twist  of  fear. 

"You  have  some  knowledge  that  I  have  not,"  she 
asserted  accusingly. 

"None,"  he  answered.  For  a  long  time  he  looked 
at  her  and  then  said,  "Your  father  was  interested  in 
Aztec  architecture?" 

"Yes."    Her  eyes  had  opened  in  amazement. 

"He  went  to  Mexico  more  than  once,"  said 
Parmalee.  "He  considered  that  the  civilization  of 
the  Mayas  was  far  more  extraordinary  than  even 
experts  like  Thompson  and  Nightingale  have  rep 
resented  it.  He  believed  that  they  had  developed 
forces  quite  unknown  to  modern  life." 

"How  did  you  know  this?"  she  asked  sharply. 

Parmalee  was  quite  nonchalant;  he  said,  "You 
forget  that  my  library  is  full  of  documents  and 
books  and  monographs  which  your  father  asked  per- 


,142          The  Vanishing  Men 

mission  to  consult.  I  am  sorry  I  did  not  meet  your 
father." 

"You  would  have  found  him  a  man  quite  in 
capable  of  believing  in  the  supernatural  whether  it 
be  a  thing  of  to-day  or  attributed  to  an  ancient 
people." 

He  thrust  a  glance  at  her.  "You  speak  with  some 
heat,"  he  said. 

"I  suppose  so,"  Brena  answered.  "It  is  because 
I  have  no  patience  with  unrealities." 

"You  would  say  more?"  he  asked  with  his  un 
canny  ability  to  read  her  thought. 

"Yes.  I  think  that  you  have  some  purpose  in 
creating  this  atmosphere  of  strange  and  unreal 
things." 

He  started  to  speak,  stopped  himself  and  after  a 
long  pause  exclaimed  sharply,  "I  agree  with  you." 

They  rode  on  toward  Cherbourg  without  speak 
ing,  but  now  and  then  glancing  up  as  if  each 
weighed  the  motives  and  challenged  the  other. 

"You  spoke  of  a  piece  of  paper  given  to  you  in  a 
roll  of  bills,"  he  said  at  last,  with  a  marked  absence 


The  Vanishing  Men  143 

of  his  usual  assurance.  "It  fluttered  out.  You 
saved  it " 

Brena  drew  back  as  if  the  subject  were  odious. 
She  said  with  unwonted  sharpness,  "I  have  cause  to 
remember.  You  are  always  speaking " 

"I've  spoken  of  it  only  twice,"  he  said.  "This 
time  I " 

He  appeared  frightened. 

"I  think  you  said  there  was  a  drawing  of  an 
arrow  and  a  lizard." 

Brena,  regretting  her  moment  of  temper,  said, 
"I  said  lizard.  I  don't  see  what  difference  it  makes. 
It  wasn't  exactly  a  lizard." 

With  great  promptness  he  thrust  toward  her  an 
envelope  and  a  pencil. 

"Draw  it,"  he  said. 

"I  told  you  I  had  almost  forgotten,"  the  girl  re 
plied.  "I  lost  the  scrap — the  figures  and  the  words." 

"Draw  it,"  he  repeated,  "the  best  you  can." 

Brena  looked  out  of  the  car  window  at  the  flashes 
of  green  and  gray  of  farms  and  farm  buildings  as 
if  she  were  searching  in  her  memory  for  a  photo 
graphic  impress.  Then  suddenly  with  the  quick 


144          The  Vanishing  Men 

precision  that  gave  her  hand  and  mind  so  many  un 
developed  talents,  she  outlined  a  strange  figure  on 
paper. 

Parmalee  snatched  it  eagerly  and  stared;  he  saw 
a  figure,  half  snake  and  half  bird. 

"That?"  said  he  in  a  voice  which  sounded  muffled. 
"Well,  do  you  know  what  that  is?" 

Brena  raised  the  arch  of  her  brows. 

"It  is  the  Kuk-ul-can,"  said  Parmalee. 

"The  Kuk-ul-can,"  she  said  repeating  it. 

"The  symbol  of  the  Mayan — the  Aztec  culture. 
The  supreme  object  of  reverence.  The  fools  who 
go  about  the  Southwest  driving  their  oil  wells,  and 
laying  their  railroad  ties  and  eating  their  prepared 
breakfast  foods  forget  that  this  symbol  is  to  be 
found  among  the  present  day  Zuni  and  other  Pueblo 
tribes,  the  degenerate  fringes  of  a  civilization  which 
flourished  before  Rome  was  suckled  by  a  wolf. 
They  forget  that  a  thousand  years  ago  it  was  carved 
on  rude  adobe  walls  in  memory  of  a  lost  grandeur 
and  lost  practices,  dead  these  six  thousand  years." 

Brena  possessed  two  laughs,  both  quite  natural 
and  sincere.  And  now  it  was  her  merry  Irish  laugh. 


The  Vanishing  Men          145 

"What  of  all  this  ?"  said  she.  "I  will  blush  for  their 
ignorance,  but  what  more  than  that  can  I  do  on  a 
sunny  Thursday?  I  am  not  interested,  old  fellow, 
in  that  which  is  dead.  I " 

She  stopped  suddenly,  sobered  by  a  recollection. 

"The  Kuk-ul-can,"  said  Parmalee.  "You've  never 
seen  that  scrap  of  paper  again,  have  you?" 

This  was  the  last  time  he  ever  spoke  of  it. 


X 

WINTER  had  come  again  when  the  Parmalees  had 
settled  into  a  quieter  life  in  New  York.  Brena  had 
turned  the  back  of  her  interest  upon  dining  out  and 
the  amusement  of  new  acquaintances. 

"There  is  a  manner  of  savoir  faire  to  be  acquired 
in  it,  Compton,"  she  admitted  to  her  husband.  "I 
have  acquired  it  a  little,  no  doubt — a  kind  of  veneer 
of  ease  which  is  like  a  glass-covered  surface  of 
troubled  waters.  It  makes  the  pool  of  personality 
appear  calm  down  to  the  bottom." 

"Yours  is,"  said  he.  "Yours  has  shown  me  the 
difference  between  the  old  deep  streams  and  the  new 
torrents." 

"You  know  how  they  say  that  contact  makes 
breadth,"  Brena  went  on.  "They  mean  that  touch 
ing  the  elbow  of  a  statesman  or  an  artist  at  dinner 
provides  the  glib  phrases  of  foreign  relations  or  al 
lows  one  to  mention  casually  the  newest  Spanish 

146 


The  Vanishing  Men          147 

painter.  But  it  is  all  surface.  For  instance  there's 
Mrs.  Balmer-Roseboro  in  London.  Her  kind  is  cov 
ered  with  feathers  plucked  from  every  magnificent 
bird  that  migrates  into  England.  But  her  mind  is 
really  only  cotton-wool  stuffing.  She  is  only  one 
stage  higher  than  the  persons  who  draw  their  in 
tellectual  reputation  from  reading  book  reviews,  or 
weeklies  printed  on  uncoated  paper  which  appear 
authoritative  because  they  are  without  illustrations. 
It  is  being  a  second-hand  dealer — in  ideas." 

Compton  nodded.  As  if  suddenly  he  had  been 
reminded  of  a  duty,  he  laughed  outright  with  the 
artificial  laugh  which  had  come  with  long  periods  of 
absent-minded  loss  of  sense  of  environment  during 
times  when,  as  if  in  a  daze,  he  stared  .far  away. 

"You  want  to  cease  seeing  people?"  he  asked. 

"I  want  to  learn  something — some  art  or  profes 
sion,  and  learn  it  well.  I  want  to  tread  upon  a  solid 
ground,"  said  Brena. 

"Good !"  Parmalee  said.  "I  cannot  tell  you  how 
glad  I  am  to  be  free  from  seeing  so  many  people." 

There  appeared  again  in  his  face  that  weariness 
from  some  tensity  which  would  not  relax,  an  ex- 


148          The  Vanishing  Men 

pression  that  increased  as  the  weeks  went  by  and 
the  lives  of  the  two  drew  more  apart. 

Less  and  less  did  he  appear  inclined  to  go  out  of 
their  apartment;  less  and  less  did  he  go  anywhere 
alone. 

"There  is  a  book  auction — the  Odin  Collection 
with  two  volumes  of  illuminated  MSS.  from  the  old 
monastery  at  El  Mayaquez,"  he  said  one  day  in 
March.  "Will  you  go  with  me,  Brena?" 

"Of  course,"  she  said,  but  his  request  marked 
sharply  the  moment  of  her  realization  that  unless 
he  were  behind  the  closed  doors  of  his  library,  he 
always  wanted  somebody  with  him.  She  tried  to 
remember  the  various  occasions  when  he  had  found 
trivial  excuses  to  take  the  butler  or  the  chauffeur 
on  some  short  excursion  beyond  the  pretentious  en 
trance  of  the  apartment  house;  she  concluded  that 
he  did  not  ask  her  to  accompany  him  for  the  pleas 
ure  of  companionship.  He  seldom  conversed  with 
her  as  he  had  once  done;  if  there  was  a  choice  be 
tween  going  with  her  or  in  the  limousine  with  Paul, 
he  chose  the  silent  and  cynical  chauffeur. 

Nor  was  this  all.     She  began  to  notice  frequent 


The  Vanishing  Men          149 

repetitions  of  the  fear  that  had  seized  him  within 
so  short  a  time  of  their  odd  marriage.  He  never 
spoke  of  this,  but  she  saw  over  and  over  again  his 
face,  which  had  become  less  youthful  now,  contort, 
the  color  leave  it,  his  eyes  grow  restless  and  fill 
with  terror.  She  had  observed  him  in  a  theater, 
even  at  a  moment  when  a  tense  dramatic  situation 
was  being  enacted  on  the  stage,  turn  around  as  one 
turns  who  feels  eyes  from  behind,  and  search  the 
faces  of  those  who  sat  in  rows  farther  back.  She 
had  known  him  to  pause  at  the  doorway  of  a  bril 
liantly  lighted  cafe  and  without  paying  attention  to 
the  beckoning  headwaiter,  who  perhaps  was  im 
pressed  by  the  distinction  and  beauty  and  carriage 
of  Brena,  costumed  as  always  with  colorings  that  no 
other  woman  of  her  tints  of  hair  would  dare  to 
essay,  look  searchingly  at  every  party  at  the  tables 
before  giving  his  hat  to  the  check  girl.  She  had 
seen  him  walk  from  end  to  end  of  a  limited  train 
gazing  from  left  to  right  at  those  in  the  drawing- 
room  chairs,  just  as  one  does  to  discover  an  ac 
quaintance,  but  with  his  countenance  smeared  over 
with  grotesque  apprehension.  He  was  forever  try- 


150          The  Vanishing  Men 

ing  to  scrutinize  the  faces  flicking  by,  whether  the 
afternoon  sun  shone  on  them  on  Fifth  Avenue  or 
they  peered  out  in  white  patches  from  under  the 
black  of  jostling  umbrellas  in  a  rainy  evening  on 
Broadway.  Even  Brena  began  to  look  apprehen 
sively  into  the  world's  stream  of  faces. 

He  who  had  once  consulted  doctors  about  his  pre 
cious  health;  who,  when  she  first  had  known  him, 
followed  the  trail  of  other  rich  men  who  amuse 
themselves  with  their  physical  condition  but  with 
that  passionate  love  of  his  own  well  being  and  life 
which  was  a  characteristic  developed  in  him  as  in 
no  other ;  who  was  steamed  and  rubbed,  manipulated, 
illuminated  by  various  rays  and  baths  of  light  to 
add  days  to  his  number,  now  had  lost  all  interest 
in  health.  Some  external  menace  had  swallowed 
the  fears  of  those  internal.  He  brooded  alone.  He 
consulted  no  one. 

Brena  felt  it  her  duty  to  interrogate  him;  she 
was  met  by  the  first  burst  of  rage  he  had  ever  pro 
jected  at  her. 

"Let  me  alone!"  he  said  evilly,  as  he  thrust  a 


The  Vanishing  Men          151 

vicious  glance  at  her.  "I  have  problems  that  are 
my  own.  Keep  your  hands  off !" 

"You  forget  that  whatever  it  is  that  is  making 
you  so  strange  affects  my  life  also,"  said  Brena. 
"Little  by  little  it  is  isolating  us  both  from  normal 
human  beings.  You  glare  into  people's  faces  as  if 
you  expected  to  have  the  next  one  fasten  his  or  her 
teeth  in  your  throat." 

"So  you  are  thinking  at  last  of  yourself." 

"Of  course  I  am,"  she  answered,  walking  around 
the  living-room  table  and  touching  the  books  there 
with  her  finger-tips.  "I  might  say  that  I  was  above 
thinking  of  myself.  But  they  who  say  it  always 
excite  my  suspicion.  I'm  trying  to  think  of  both 
of  us — as  an  average  human  being  should." 

He  said,  "You  forget!"  He  was  in  a  towering 
anger. 

"No,  I  don't,"  Brena  replied  quietly.  "You 
bought  me." 

She  picked  up  a  novel,  read  its  title  and  dropped 
it  suddenly,  as  she  said,  "Yes,  you  bought  me — the 
bargain  of  giving  me  a  life  for  growth  and  in  re 
turn  I  was  to  be  your  companion.  You  asked  for 


152          The  Vanishing  Men 

no  more  than  that  and  to  have  me  help  you  come 
back  to  some  sweetness  of  spirit  for  which  you 
longed.  Well,  I've  given  you  nothing  more  than 
you  bought.  And  nothing  less.  For  I've  tried." 

He  looked  up  quickly,  turned  his  ear  toward  her 
and  then,  having  listened,  stared  at  the  ceiling. 

"I  was  wrong,"  he  said.  "A  brutish  moment.  I 
only  meant  that  there  is  something,  of  course — my 
nerves,  no  doubt — a  decay." 

"It  would  be  unfair  for  me  not  to  say  more," 
said  Brena. 

He  folded  his  small,  cold  hands  upon  the  open 
book  in  his  lap  and  stared. 

"You  do  not  mean  that  some  man " 

"No." 

"I  couldn't  tell,  of  course.  A  bargain  is  a  bar 
gain.  The  truth  is  that  I  would  be  joyful  if  you 
were  made  happy.  I  expect  that.  But  I  couldn't 
know  its  approach.  Your  circles  and  mine  are  no 
longer  the  same.  You  are  ripening  still — a  won 
derful  miracle !" 

"You  have  no  circle,"  said  Brena. 

"No,"  said  he,  "I  have  no  circle." 


The  Vanishing  Men          153 

"There  are  times  when  I  wonder  whether  this 
new  turn  in  our  lives  is  not  connected  in  some  way 
with  me." 

"New  turn?" 

"Yes!"  She  was  vehement.  "This  thing  which 
hangs  over  us  like  a  guillotine  blade.  This  thing 
which  makes  you  go  about  wrapped  in  your  chills 
of  fear.  This  thing  which  makes  your  eyes  flicker 
from  side  to  side  as  if  every  street  corner  were  an 
ambush.  The  thing  which  makes  you  afraid  to  be 
alone." 

He  sprang  up. 

"What  if  it  were?"  he  said.  "It  is  possible,  isn't 
it?  It  is  possible  that  a  person  might  carry  around 
in  their  trail  some  strange  destiny.  There  might  be 
some  extraordinary  forces  behind  you,  mightn't 
there?  It  is  possible  that  some  tragic  end  awaits 
all  men  who  bind  their  lives  with  yours." 

Brena  opened  wide  her  dark  eyes. 

"That  is  enough,"  she  said. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?" 

"I'm  going  to  leave  you,  Compton,"  she  said. 

If  she  had  spoken  these  lines  in  the  theatrical  em- 


154          The  Vanishing  Men 

phasis  with  which  they  are  spoken  by  several  hun 
dred  women  in  each  thousand  sooner  or  later,  as 
wise  a  man  as  Compton  Parmalee  would  have 
laughed  in  her  face.  It  was  only  necessary  to  know 
Brena  to  know  that  if  she  said  these  words  it  would 
be  with  a  calm,  a  sureness,  a  regretful  sorrow  all 
combined  in  the  tone  of  her  voice  and  the  expres 
sion  in  her  eyes  that  would  carry  conviction.  Comp 
ton  was  convinced. 

The  idea  knocked  him  onto  his  knees.  He  came 
half  crawling,  stumbling,  struggling  up  toward  her. 

"No,  no!  No,  no,  Brena — for  God's  sake!"  he 
whimpered.  "For  the  love  of  Christ  don't  leave 
me!" 

At  her  feet  he  shampooed  his  hair  as  in  an 
imaginary  basin  until  its  sparse  growth  had  been 
rumpled  under  the  palms  of  his  clutching,  twitching 
hands. 

"Well,  then  never  speak  of  any  mystery  trailing 
upon  my  heels,"  she  had  said.  "Never  bring  this 
insinuation  that  a  curse  follows  me.  You  have  had 
your  chance  to  be  free  of  it  and  instead  of  wanting 
me  to  go  you  want  me  to  stay.  I  loathe  dramatics, 


The  Vanishing  Men          155 

Compton.  This  is  the  twentieth  and  not  the  twelfth 
century  and  those  who  now  attempt  to  raise  super 
stitions  will  fare  badly  if  others  believe  as  I  do. 
Get  up!" 

He  stood.  With  his  eyes  indicating  humiliation 
through  the  terror  which  still  lingered  in  his  face, 
he  arose  and  walked  toward  the  door. 

"Very  well,"  he  said  at  last  in  cold,  hard  syllables. 
"You  shall  not  hear  of  it  again.  Forget  it.  Call 
it  a  mad  and  foolish  thing.  My  lips  are  sealed.  But 
the  time  will  come.  There  are  stranger  things  in 
the  world  than  you  know." 

He  closed  the  door  and  left  her  alone,  somewhat 
shaken;  and  in  spite  of  all  that  she  had  said,  some 
what  eager  to  ask  him  more.  If  she  had,  he  would 
have  pressed  his  thin  lips  tight  and  said  nothing. 
He  did  this  on  later  occasions;  he  had  made  up 
his  mind  to  wrestle  with  his  fears,  whatever  they 
might  be,  alone.  His  physician  told  Brena  con 
fidentially  that  Compton  Parmalee  was  suffering 
only  from  a  mild  form  of  neurasthenia  in  which 
dread  had  attached  itself  to  some  particular  chain 
of  morbid  thoughts. 


156          The  Vanishing  Men 

In  March  Parmalee  conceived  the  idea  that  he 
was  being  followed.  He  spoke  of  it  several  times 
and  Brena  laughed. 

"Why  should  any  one  follow  you?"  she  inquired 
scornfully.  "You  tell  me  that  you  understand  why 
I  am  followed  sometimes  on  my  way  home  from 
the  Studio,  but  I  cannot  offer  the  same  explanation 
for  you.  Come,  Compton,  let's  be  sensible." 

He  was  not  amused. 

"Then  report  it  to  the  police,"  she  said. 

"The  police!" 

"Yes." 

"What  a  suggestion !" 

She  heard  no  more,  however,  of  his  morbid  sus 
picion;  no  one  was  following  him  she  was  convinced. 
And  yet  the  unknown  terror,  of  which  he  would  now 
say  nothing,  infected  her  so  that  the  cloth  of  eacii 
day  had  wroven  into  it  some  threads  of  fear,  in  ;i 
crazy,  senseless,  indistinct  pattern. 

A  crisis  came  on  one  of  those  warm  evenings 
which  descend  suddenly  upon  the  chill  of  the  winter 
and  tell  of  an  impatient,  hasty,  headlong  Spring, 
which  has  crept  up  through  the  open  country  and 


The  Vanishing  Men          157 

comes  at  dusk  to  the  gates  of  the  cities.  Some 
musical  performance,  long  since  forgotten  by  Brena, 
took  the  pair  out  until  nearly  eleven,  and  Parmalee 
wanted  to  walk  home  through  the  moonlight.  A 
sleepy  elevator  man  took  them  up  in  a  chaste,  white 
and  gold  car  to  their  apartment  door. 

"Good  night,"  said  Brena.  "Good  night,  Comp- 
ton.  You  seemed  to-night  more  like  yourself." 

He  laughed  and  waved  to  her  as  she  went  down 
the  corridor  to  her  chambers.  She  switched  on  the 
wall  lights  of  her  dressing-room,  bedroom  and  bath, 
and  undressed  leisurely  before  the  long  mirror,  look 
ing  about  as  her  memory  took  her  back  to  the  hot 
room  under  the  roof  at  Mrs.  Wilkie's  with  its  yellow 
varnished  wood-work  and  its  plaster  walls,  stained 
a  hideous  thermic  orange,  its  little  red  ants  that  no 
eradicator  ever  eradicated  and  the  screams  of  the 
baby  coming  out  of  a  window  in  the  next  house. 
Nothing  in  the  luxurious  quarters  she  now  oc 
cupied  could  remind  one  of  Mrs.  Wilkie's  un 
less  it  were  the  picture  of  the  Acropolis  that  had 
belonged  to  Brena's  father,  still  in  its  battered  frame 
and  hanging  above  her  bed.  And  yet  she  stopped 


158          The  Vanishing  Men 

braiding  her  red-bronze  hair  as  one  of  those  strange 
calls  of  wistful  longing  for  the  past,  even  for  the 
tragic  or  the  sordid  past,  that  comes  to  all  of  us, 
came  to  her. 

No  one  would  credit  her  with  remembering  some 
few  years  afterward  the  exact  contents  of  her 
thoughts  at  this  moment,  were  it  not  a  fact  that 
the  thought  itself  had  been  interrupted  and  there 
fore  engraved  by  three  quick  successive  pistol  shots. 

They  came  and  went  as  revolver  cracks  do  behind 
heavy  closed  doors  with  a  muffled  thudding;  she 
knew  what  they  were.  They  were  followed  by  a 
little  crash  as  of  a  vase  falling. 

Her  first  thought  was  that  Parmalee  had  killed 
himself.  Perhaps  if  her  mind  had  been  less  active 
she  would  have  screamed,  flung  open  the  door  and 
rushed  out,  expecting  the  horrors  of  a  suicide;  she 
remembered,  however,  that  there  had  been  three 
shots,  more  than  the  number  usually  fired  by  one 
who  seeks  destruction.  Brena  concluded  that  what 
ever  the  menace  her  husband  had  feared,  it  now  had 
proved  its  reality.  She  has  said  since  that,  for  the 
moment,  she  at  least  believed,  and  even  in  her 


The  Vanishing  Men          159 

startled  breathing  she  formed  the  words,  "It  is  some 
fault  of  mine." 

The  turning  out  of  her  own  lights  disclosed  the 
fact  that  the  corridor  beyond  the  crack  under  her 
own  door  was  dark  also.  From  it  came  no  sound, 
except  for  the  distant  purr  of  the  elevator  taking 
up  some  yawning  after-theater  homecomers.  Brena 
could  only  hear  her  own  heart. 

Without  the  dangerous  background  of  light  be 
hind  her,  she  opened  the  door  cautiously  and  the 
moon's  rays  on  the  carpet  beneath  her  feet  went 
forward  across  the  carpet  in  the  corridor  like  sliding 
fingers. 

"Stand  back,  Brena.  Don't  get  between  me  and 
him.  He's  at  the  end  of  the  hall."  It  was  the  voice 
of  her  husband.  "Look  out.  I'm  going  to  turn  on 
the  lights!" 

A  sudden  rush  of  illumination  filled  the  corridor. 

"You  are  a  fool !"  said  Brena. 

"I?" 

"You  have  shot  the  glass  out  of  this  picture." 
She  pointed  to  the  large  photographic  print  of  "The 
Man  with  the  Glove"  that  had  been  the  one  wedding 


160          The  Vanishing  Men 

present  sent  after  them  from  Dallas  by  a  Jewish  cot 
ton  broker,  once  one  of  Parmalee's  bitter  rivals.  It 
had  been  the  subject  of  Brena's  comment  that  the 
donor  gave  it  in  celebration  of  Parmalee's  retirement 
from  business  rather  than  of  his  marriage,  and  she, 
disliking  pictures  on  general  principles,  had  hung  it 
where  it  would  be  seen  the  least. 

"I  thought  it  was  him,"  said  Parmalee,  coming 
forward  with  the  revolver  still  in  his  hand. 

"Him?"  asked  Brena.    "Who  then?" 

"Why,  a  burglar,"  he  said,  still  quivering  with 
excitement. 

"You  saw  only  your  own  moving  reflection  on  the 
glass  mixed  into  this  figure  which  you've  decorated 
with  three  bullet  holes,"  she  said. 

A  knocking  and  ringing  had  begun  at  the  elevator 
door  of  the  apartment. 

"Anything  wrong,  sir?"  asked  a  voice  outside. 

"No,  no,"  Parmalee  answered,  feeling  his  way 
back  till  he  could  lean  against  the  wall. 

"Very  good,  sir." 

Brena,  who  probably  appeared  more  like  a  Grecian 
goddess  than  ever  in  the  white  drapery  of  her  night 


The  Vanishing  Men          161 

attire,  walked  to  Parmalee  with  deliberation  and 
took  the  revolver  from  his  hand. 

"Where  did  this  come  from  ?"  she  asked. 

"I  bought  it." 

"When?" 

"A  month  ago." 

"A  month  ago?    Why?" 

"I  don't  know.    There  are  always  intruders." 

"Compton,  you  are  a  sick  man,"  she  said.  "You 
are  a  sick  and  unnerved  man.  You  are  living  a 
miserable  life.  You  are  making  me  live  one.  There 
is  nothing  worse  than  fear.  It  is  more  horrible  than 
the  thing  it  dreads." 

"I've  often  thought  that — yes,  I  have!"  he  said. 
"I've  often  thought  I'd  be  driven  to  find  out." 

"Tell  me,"  she  commanded. 

He  shut  tight  his  thin  lips. 

She  came  closer  and  put  her  hands  upon  his 
shoulders  as  if  she  were  a  mother  about  to  give  a 
child  a  good  shaking. 

"The  city  is  bad  for  you,  Compton,"  she  said. 
"You  are  quivering  yourself  to  pieces  over  some 


162          The  Vanishing  Men 

absurd  apprehension.  We  must  go  outside  some 
where — a  house,  a  garden — quiet." 

He  appeared  as  if  he  were  about  to  fall  apart. 
He  almost  blubbered.  He  said,  "Thank  God  you've 
said  that,  Brena.  We  must  go  where  I  can  escape, 
if  there  is  a  chance  to  escape.  You're  right.  It's 
got  my  nerve." 

"What?" 

"Yes,  what?"  he  whimpered.  "That's  it.  But 
we  must  go — where  you  said.  I'll  pull  myself  to 
gether.  And  Brena " 

"Yes." 

"If  anything  does  happen  to  me " 

"Yes." 

" you're  not  to  blame — not  in  the  sense  that 

it's  your  own  will.  Do  you  understand  ?  I'm  trying 
to  be  a  man.  Can't  you  see.  In  the  morning " 

She  looked  at  him  in  disgust;  for  the  first  time 
she  felt  a  pang  of  hate. 

Within  thirty  days  he  had  purchased  a  great 
gloomy  house  up  the  Hudson.  It  had  been  built  in 
the  seventies  by  some  affluent  banker  with  a  taste 
for  squares.  The  house  was  square,  the  rooms  in  it 


The  Vanishing  Men          163 

were  spacious,  lofty,  hollow-sounding  cubes,  and 
the  garden  was  square  in  a  square  area  which  con 
tained  itself  and  the  house  within  a  high  brick  wall 
painted  a  slate  gray  to  match  the  house  and  with  a 
great  decorated  iron  gate  which  could  be  closed  at 
night  The  upper  windows  looked  out  in  summer 
upon  the  tossing  branches  of  old  trees  growing  out 
of  vast,  damp  bald  spots  on  the  lawn  and  in  winter 
upon  the  stark  boughs  and  the  silver  of  the  Hudson 
River.  The  place  was  in  a  slight  hollow  in  a  hill 
top,  isolated,  glowering,  without  the  flavor  of  old 
places  lived  in  richly  and  warmly,  but  suggesting 
questionings  as  to  which  room  the  family  had  used 
to  die  in,  and  forecasting  nights  when  the  wind 
would  howl  around  the  corners  of  the  French  roof. 

Parmalee  had  a  coping  of  concrete,  rilled  with 
broken  glass,  built  all  around  the  top  of  the  wall.  He 
had  ordered  iron  bars  for  the  lower  windows,  and 
a  bill  for  an  elaborate  electric  burglar-alarm  system 
was  on  his  desk  the  morning  that  he  disclosed  to 
Brena  that  he  had  bought  her  a  house. 

"At  last  you  have  a  home,"  said  he. 


XI 

THE  retreat  into  the  walled  estate  which  perched 
like  a  great  cube  of  gray  gloom  among  the  twisted 
old  trees  overlooking  the  Hudson  River  gave  little 
relief  to  the  secret  fears  of  Compton  Parmalee. 

For  a  few  months,  to  be  sure,  he  showed  lively 
interest  in  the  rehabilitation  of  the  place.  Brena, 
who  after  a  long  struggle  with  her  conscience  had 
made  up  her  mind  to  stand  by  her  extraordinary 
husband,  found  herself  wondering  often  enough 
whether  his  interest  was  not  like  her  own,  a  sham 
erected  out  of  a  sense  of  duty  by  one  to  deceive  the 
other.  During  this  first  period  of  their  terrible  exist 
ence  there,  she  built  up  a  slender  tottering  hope  that 
she  might,  as  she  had  agreed,  reclaim  him.  She  had 
formulated  a  policy  and  to  this  policy  she  would 
cling  with  all  the  tenacity  of  which  she  was  capable. 

Her  policy  had  been  formed  with  full  knowledge 
of  the  fact  that  it  would  be  hard  to  follow.  Her 
own  nature  revolted  against  mysteries  and  supersti- 

\64 


The  Vanishing  Men          165 

tions  and  fears  of  unrealities.  Her  husband  had  not 
ever  given  her  grounds  to  assert  that  these  were  the 
basis  for  his  morbid  panics,  but  he  had,  by  malice  or 
inadvertence,  created  a  dim  picture  of  some  menace, 
some  secret  human  conspiracy,  some  strange  force, 
which  pursued  to  the  death  any  man  unlucky  enough 
to  have  meddled  with  her  destiny.  At  times  it  was 
difficult  for  her  to  escape,  by  the  exercise  of  com 
mon  sense,  a  haunting  idea  that  there  was  some 
foundation  for  this  apparent  absurdity.  As  she  said : 
"It  is  just  so  with  all  things.  The  confidence  of 
knowledge  isn't  half  as  much  because  a  person  has 
possession  of  the  facts  as  because  one  has  freedom 
at  last  from  the  fear  that  there  is  so  much  that  one 
doesn't  know."  But  she  disliked  herself  for  her 
own  uncertainties. 

A  choice  was  open  to  her  between  turning  her 
back  upon  Parmalee's  fears  and  setting  out  by  sys 
tematic  and  persistent  observation  and  cross  ques 
tioning  to  uncover  them.  It  was  not  because  the  lat 
ter  course  was  difficult  that  she  rejected  it;  it  was 
not  because,  little  by  little,  he  had  built  a  wall 
around  his  own  thoughts  which  not  only  unfitted 


166          The  Vanishing  Men 

him  for  social  contact  but  excluded  her  from  his 
inner  life;  it  was  not  because  of  his  increasing 
irritability  when  questioned,  nor  finally  was  it  be 
cause  he  always,  in  the  end,  made  her  feel  that  he 
was  trying  to  spare  her  from  some  dreadful  knowl 
edge,  and  some  overhanging  curse  that  was  upon 
her.  She  chose  to  neglect  the  terror  that  had  seized 
him  because  she  felt  that  if  sufficient  neglect 
were  heaped  upon  it,  it  would  gradually  die.  Often 
enough  in  years  that  were  to  follow  she  wished  with 
all  her  being  that  she  had  not  allowed  herself  to  re 
main  in  the  dark. 

She  wished  often  enough  after  the  end  came  that 
she  had  at  least  kept  her  eyes  open,  but  there  were 
incidents  which  drew  her  attention  by  the  very  force 
of  their  being  extraordinary  or  bizarre. 

Evenings  spent  in  the  high  studded  chambers  of 
this  austere  abode  that  none  of  her  decorative  skill, 
given  free  play  by  Parmalee's  money,  could  rescue 
from  their  brooding  gloom  were  far  from  cheerful. 
The  temper  of  her  husband  forbade  entertainment 
and,  try  as  he  did,  there  was  no  comfort  for  him  in 
his  efforts  to  converse  with  Brena — efforts  which 


The  Vanishing  Men  167 

like  the  squeezing  of  the  juice  from  a  sour  fruit  pro 
duced  less  the  more  the  pressure  had  been  applied. 
Within  a  year  he  had  developed  an  insatiable  ap 
petite  for  his  studies  of  the  history  of  the  Southwest, 
his  collecting  of  books  and  manuscripts  bearing 
upon  the  ancient  civilization  and  tribes  of  Central 
America,  Mexico  and  the  tangent  region  of  the 
United  States  where  the  painted  deserts  are,  and  his 
compilation  of  data  that  bore  in  any  way  upon  the 
comparison  of  the  Inca,  the  Aztec  and  the  Yucatan 
civilizations  with  those  of  Egypt,  Greece  and  Persia. 
There  is  still  in  existence,  covered  with  dust,  a  pile 
of  manuscript  in  his  own  handwriting  which,  it  ap 
pears,  was  the  beginning  of  a  wrork  upon  a  subject 
that  only  his  interest  qualified  him  to  attempt  A 
speculator,  gambler,  cotton  broker  and  commission 
agent,  as  Brena  has  said,  does  not  bring  to  a  pre 
tentious  scientific  work,  the  orderly  mind,  the  ease 
of  expression  nor  the  realization  of  its  magnitude 
that  one  might  expect  in  a  professor,  for  instance. 
He  might  better  have  spent  his  time  in  furnishing 
to  his  beautiful  young  wife  a  companionship  of  some 
kind  no  matter  how  inadequate,  but  he  had  closed 


168          The  Vanishing  Men 

himself  in  a  ghastly  shell  of  his  own.  Sometimes 
for  days  she  did  not  see  him  at  all  and  only  knew 
of  his  presence  in  his  library  by  his  fits  of  coughing. 
Brena,  committed  to  waiting  for  the  conclusive 
end  to  this  distorted  existence,  which  something 
within  told  her  destiny  would  bring,  found  refresh 
ment  only  in  her  days.  When  morning  came  there 
was  an  escape ;  she  could  go  by  train  or  motor  to  the 
city.  Though  she  found  among  the  persons  she  met 
and  those  who  worked  with  her  in  the  Forest  Pot 
tery,  founded  with  her  own  money,  that  she  (a  grim 
joke)  was  looked  upon  distantly  as  a  young,  rich, 
contented  wife,  she  drank  down  long  draughts  of  the 
pleasures  of  creative  labor  and  of  the  patronage  she 
was  able  to  give  to  young  women  whose  talents  de 
served  development.  Her  activity  would  have  been 
sufficient,  however,  if  it  had  served  only  to  sub 
merge  the  memories  of  nights  alone  in  her  two  great 
rooms  when  the  wind  played  mournful  melodies  as 
if  on  the  bars  of  moonlight  that  fell  through  the 
gates  of  Parmalee's  estate  and  across  the  damp 
lawn  from  which,  winter  and  summer,  there  arose 
the  odors  of  decay  and  death. 


The  Vanishing  Men          169 

If  the  idea  that  she  was  wasting  her  rare  youth, 
her  marked  beauty  and  the  full  capacities  of  her 
womanhood  sometimes  oppressed  her,  she  at  least 
kept  her  peace.  Something  of  firmness,  not  there 
before,  began  to  appear  upon  her  face.  Probably 
no  mirror  could  have  shown  her  as  clearly  the 
woman  she  was  throwing  away  as  the  portrait  of 
her  painted  during  this  period  by  young  Sydenham, 
who  had  just  come  over  from  England. 

He  succeeded,  it  was  said,  in  expressing  in  his 
colors  and  bold  method  that  extraordinary  combina 
tion  in  Brena  which  gave  her  the  atmosphere  of  the 
permanence  of  a  temple  and  yet  the  shimmer  of  a 
golden  moment,  come  and  gone  in  a  warm  transitory 
glow  beneath  her  cream-colored  skin,  a  glimmer  of 
light  from  her  golden-red  hair,  or  some  almost  im 
perceptible  flexure  of  her  sensitive  lips. 

Parmalee,  urged  by  his  wife,  saw  this  portrait 
when  young  Sydenham  had  finished  it.  He  thrust 
his  glances  at  it  in  his  usual  way  and  several  times 
turned  one  ear  toward  the  picture  as  if  inviting 
words  from  it. 

"A  person!"  he  said.    "And  most  of  her  is  there 


170          The  Vanishing  Men 

— a  good  deal  of  her  soul.  A  glorious  piece  of  coloi? 
— a  massive  glow  and  yet  her  eyes — they  are  the 
masters  of  the  canvas.  That  is  astonishing " 

Of  course  Sydenham  beamed.  He  fed  upon  ad 
miration — as  much  perhaps  upon  that  which  came, 
to  him  because  he  was  one  of  those  men  who  may 
be  called  a  beautiful  youth  and  had  been  petted  by 
the  idle  rich  and  their  daughters,  as  upon  the  praises 
for  his  extraordinary  art. 

"Well,  I  shall  buy  it,"  Parmalee  had  said  with  a 
sudden  unannounced  determination  for  which  Brena 
was  unprepared.  She  showed  it  by  the  astonish 
ment  in  her  eyes. 

Sydenham  smiled.  He  said :  "But,  Mr.  Parmalee, 
it  was  the  understanding  with  Mrs.  Parmalee  that 
I  was  to  exhibit  the  picture.  All  things  considered 
it  is  the  best  thing  I  have  ever  done.  I  have  planned 
to  exhibit  my  things  rather  widely  in  America.  Shall 
I  say  that  I  am  going  en  tour  across  the  country? 
After  exhibiting — whv  then — of  course " 

Parmalee's  face  contorted.    He  wet  his  lips. 

"You  have  a  price,"  he  snapped  out. 


The  Vanishing  Men          171 

Sydenham,  the  self-confident,  the  whimsical,  the 
theatrical  youth  waved  his  pale  hand. 

"At  present  there  is  no  price,  Mr.  Parmalee,"  he 
said. 

The  cotton  broker  pulled  at  his  collar  rim  as  if  he 
had  need  of  air. 

"What  have  you  proposed  as  the  title  of  this 
picture?" 

"Why — the — name — Mrs.  Parmalee " 

"That's  foolish,  Sydenham,"  Compton  said.  "I'm 
prejudiced  in  favor  of  the  name  Parmalee,  but  even 
I  know  better  than  to  exhibit  a  picture  under  the 
title  Mrs.  Smith  Jones  or  even  Mrs.  Parmalee." 

"Oh,  I  know,"  Sydenham  replied  with  his  superior 
manner.  "I  didn't  mean  that;  I'd  thought  it  better 
to  call  the  picture  Brena." 

"Brena!"  roared  Parmalee. 

"Yes." 

"I  won't  have  it !" 

"Why  not?"  his  wife  asked  rising  from  the  divan 
and  coming  out  of  the  studio  shadows.  "Why  not, 
Compton?" 

"Because  the  name  is  a  peculiar  name,"  said  her 


172          The  Vanishing  Men 

husband  in  a  ridiculous  petty  rage.  "It  is  yours  and 
I  don't  want  it  spread  all  over  every  picture  gallery. 
It's  bad  enough " 

"Wait,"  Sydenham  interrupted.  "You  have  no 
cause  to  be  disturbed.  I  shall  call  the  picture  'The 
Riddle.'  It  will  be  offered  to  you  at  the  end  of  my 
exhibitions  under  that  title." 

It  never  was  offered  to  Parmalee  as  a  matter  of 
fact  and  those  who  remember  it  only  identify  it  by 
the  title  Sydenham  gave  it,  but  Brena  tried  in  vaia 
whenever  she  thought  of  this  incident  during  that 
period  to  escape  the  conclusion  that  Compton  feared 
that  somewhere  some  one  would  recognize  her  like 
ness,  especially  if  her  own  name  had  been  attached 
to  it,  and  then  through  the  artist  trace  back  until  she 
were  found. 

Not  six  months  later  the  suggestion  that  Parmalee 
feared  some  individual  or  group  of  individuals 
who  would  deliver  to  him  a  dreadful  vengeance, 
came  sharply  to  her  attention,  leaping  up,  like  a 
horrid  shape  out  of  the  quiet  path  of  life,  to  stare 
into  her  face. 

She  had  been  motoring  out  from  New  York  with 


The  Vanishing  Men          173 

Paul,  the  tactiturn  chauffeur,  who  always  appeared 
to  her  to  be  a  man  with  the  odors  of  the  penitentiary 
clinging  to  his  bristled,  badly  shaped  head,  but  who 
had  been  retained  by  Parmalee,  through  many  a  raise 
in  salary  and  many  an  exhibition  of  insolence. 

"I'm  glad  that  you  are  well  again,"  Brena  said  to 
him  as  they  were  winding  up  the  vine-like  road  that 
approached  the  glowering  old  house. 

"I'm  not  well,  madame,"  Paul  said.  "But  the 
substitute — Marks — the  man  Mr.  Parmalee  engaged 
to  cover  my  illness,  ma'am — he  left." 

"I  didn't  know,"  she  said.  "Mr.  Parmalee  en 
gages  all  the  employees,  Paul — even  the  maids.  He 
wishes  to  do  so.  So  I  didn't  know." 

"There's  much  that  one  doesn't  know,  ma'am, 
isn't  there?"  he  said  in  an  oily  voice  behind  which 
was  a  snarl. 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"For  instance,  the  reason  Marks  left." 

"What  reason?" 

"Well,  ma'am,  Mr.  Parmalee  is  suspicious  of  ser 
vants.  You  probably  don't  know  he  requires  a  birth 
certificate  and  all  of  that.  Getting  a  job  here  is  just 


174          The  Vanishing  Men 

like  getting  a  passport,  ma'am.  And  Marks  he  had 
one  forged — he  did — not  meaning  any  harm.  But 
Mr.  Parmalee  found  it  out.  He  wrote  himself  to  the 
city  clerk  of  the  place.  And  when  he  knew,  there 
was  no  taming  him,  ma'am.  He  was  like  a  rat  in  a 
corner,  if  I  may  say  so — frothing  like  a  mad  dog." 

If  Paul  had  not  occupied  a  position  from  which 
no  insolence  of  his  own  ever  had  dislodged  him, 
Brena  would  have  dismissed  him  then  and  there. 
She  knew,  however,  that  her  husband  would  re 
instate  him. 

"Paul  is  a  handy  man — with  his  fists  and  perhaps 
with  other  weapons,"  Parmalee  had  said.  "I  feel 
that  he  would  be  useful  in  an  emergency." 

Brena  concluded  that  not  only  was  Compton 
living  in  terror  himself,  but  that  now  and  then  he 
yielded  to  the  temptation  to  communicate  this  terror 
to  her  just  as  one  who  suffers  from  a  disease  might 
have  a  degenerate  desire  to  spread  its  contagion. 
She  resisted  this  by  pretending  not  to  recognize  the 
existence  of  any  abnormality  in  their  lives. 

The  third  winter  of  their  marriage  her  husband 
began  a  practice  of  finding  relief  from  that  terror 


The  Vanishing  Men          175 

which  had  crept  in  upon  him  at  first  but  now  had 
begun  to  drive  his  nerves  into  a  gallop.  He  who  had 
conserved  so  carefully  his  precious  health,  now  un 
dertook  a  new  burden. 

Brena  came  down  one  morning  when  the  rain  of  a 
wild  March  day  was  beating  on  the  windows.  The 
wind,  tearing  up  the  leaves  of  the  Autumn  that  had 
lain  all  winter  beneath  the  snow  and  ice  of  the 
mournful,  dripping  garden  but  was  now  released  by 
a  thaw,  was  slapping  wet  refuse  against  the  great 
window  panes  behind  the  menacing  iron  bars.  It 
cast  rotten  vegetation  at  this  house  as  if  it  were 
throwing  riff-raff  into  the  face  of  an  accursed  per 
sonality. 

Parmalee  did  not  answer  her  call.  He  was  not  at 
the  breakfast  table.  The  servants  could  not  find 
him  in  his  rooms.  He  was  discovered  finally  by  his 
voice  which  came  in  faintly  with  the  sound  of  the 
wind.  Brena  without  protection  from  the  driving 
rain  ran  out  the  great  front  door,  down  the  path 
which  cut  a  diameter  in  the  circle  of  the  driveway, 
to  the  massive  iron  gate. 

Parmalee  was  there  with  his  little  white  hands 


176          The  Vanishing  Men 

grasping  the  upright  bars — swaying  backward  and 
forward  like  a  caged  animal,  staring  out  with  wild 
red  eves  at  the  high  shores  of  the  distant  river  bank 
seen  through  the  haze,  his  bare  head  wet  and 
disheveled. 

"Come  on  and  get  me — damn  your  eyes!"  he 
screamed.  "You've  been  waiting  long  enough. 
Come  on  and  get  me.  I'm  not  afraid  of  you  all." 

Brena  looked  over  his  shoulder  up  and  down  the 
road  beyond  the  gate.  Water  was  standing  in  the 
shallow  ruts  and  the  shrubbery  whipped  by  the  wind 
danced  like  lithe  devils  along  the  crest  of  the  palisade. 
But  no  living  creature  was  in  sight. 

"You  better  come  into  the  house,  Compton,"  she 
said  with  a  tone  of  authority. 

She  realized  afterward  that  she  had  leaped  rather 
joyfully  toward  the  conclusion  that  this  moment  ex 
plained  the  menace  which  had  hung  over  them  so 
long  and  that  it  promised  a  definite  end  of  her 
obligations.  She  remembered  of  thinking  how  like 
an  angry  impotent  little  dog  he  was,  coward  at  heart, 
but  barking  behind  a  gate  at  an  empty  road.  She 
believed  he  had  lost  his  mind. 


The  Vanishing  Men          177 

"Come  into  the  house,"  she  repeated. 

He  looked  at  her  stupidly,  his  lower  jaw  limp  and 
hanging,  his  eyes  watery  and  looking  into  her  face 
with  the  troubled  expression  of  one  trying  to  dis 
cover  the  surroundings  after  a  loss  of  conscious 
ness. 

"All  right,"  he  said  hoarsely,  "I'm  all  right, 
Brena." 

He  appeared  weak,  unable  to  carry  himself  erect, 
and  his  breath  wheezed  unpleasantly  as  he  followed 
her  meekly  up  the  walk  and  the  wet  granite  steps 
of  the  frowning  house. 

"Go  upstairs  and  lie  down,"  she  commanded. 

He  stopped  with  his  hands  on  the  black  walnut 
newel  post  of  the  stairs  and  leaned  toward  her  con 
fidentially. 

"Footprints,"  said  he  grinning  like  a  fiend.  "Foot 
prints." 

Brena,  opening  the  door  of  his  library,  walked 
rapidly  toward  the  telephone  on  his  desk.  At  last 
she  had  been  driven  to  summon  the  aid,  counsel  and 
authority  of  the  world  beyond  the  doors  of  this 
damned  home.  Parmalee  was  mad.  But  as  she  put 


178          The  Vanishing  Men 

out  her  hand  toward  the  telephone  instrument  it 
knocked  over  an  empty  glass.  She  raised  this  glass 
to  her  nose.  The  supports  of  her  heart  suddenly 
crumbled,  for  she  knew  then  that  her  husband  was 
not  mad,  not  changed  permanently  from  the  crafty, 
secretive,  self -isolated  and  haunted  man  that  he  had 
been,  but  was  only  at  the  end  of  a  long  night  of  try 
ing  to  drink  himself  into  the  freedom  of  insensibility. 
At  this  moment  she  wondered  why  she  did  not 
feel  a  marked  increase  of  the  old  loathing  and  dis 
gust  that  she  had  been  unable  to  weed  out  as  it 
had  sprung  up  like  some  rank  growth.  At  this 
moment  she  remembered  his  first  appeal  to  her,  how 
he  had  begged  her  to  help  him  win  back  the  clean 
spirit  of  his  boyhood,  how  she  had  once  seen  the 
glint  of  that  treasured  something,  which  men  for 
get  to  keep,  shining  dimly  in  the  midst  of  decay, 
how  having  tasted  the  bitterness  of  success,  he  had 
built  new  hope.  Now  he  was  a  grotesque  failure, 
pounding  to  pieces  upon  some  unseen  rock  below 
the  surface  of  the  waters.  He  was  paying  the  ac 
count  of  lifetime  perhaps ;  perhaps  the  reckoning  of 


The  Vanishing  Men          179 

one  mistake.  There  surged  up  to  the  brim  in  her 
heart  a  great  pity. 

:  To  Brena  the  cause  of  his  panic,  his  terror,  his 
suspicions,  his  isolation,  the  horrid  exiled  days  he 
led,  the  sleepless  nights  he  spent  now  appeared  of 
less  importance  than  the  fact  that  no  man  was  suf 
fering  more  than  he.  But  she  was  unable  to  help 
him :  his  defenses  were  now  impregnable. 

"I  do  not  know  what  you  mean,"  he  said.  "We 
live  a  clean,  wholesome  kind  of  existence,  don't  we? 
You  never  hear  complaints  from  me.  I  do  not  go 
out  much,  it  is  true.  But  I  am  working.  I  do  not 
sleep  well.  Neither  do  many  men.  I  drank  too 
much  once,  that  is  true.  But  that  was  thirty  or 
forty  days  ago.  You  have  not  seen  me  make  the 
mistake  again." 

"You  are  forever  sending  John  down  for  a  new 
bottle,"  said  Brena. 

He  thrust  a  glance  at  her. 

"It  calms  me.  My  nerves  are  not  good — there's 
no  denying.  But  why  should  you  complain,  Brena  ? 
You  have  your  freedom.  You  go  your  own  ways. 
You  conduct  your  own  studies.  You  can  have  any- 


180          The  Vanishing  Men 

thing  you  want  for  the  asking.     Why  complain?" 

"I'm  not  complaining,"  she  had  said  shutting  her 
lips  into  a  firm  line.  "I  am  inquiring." 

"Inquiring?"  he  said  with  sudden  heat.  "Well,  by 
God,  if  you  ask  once  too  often — you  shall  know !  I'll 
tell  you  something  about  yourself  you'll  not  want  to 
hear." 

"You  cannot,"  she  answered  quietly. 

"Are  you  laughing  at  me?"  he  exclaimed  angrily. 

"I  was  smiling." 

"Smile  on!"  he  snapped.  "Maybe  you  can  tell 
where  Jim  Hennepin  is.  Maybe  in  the  end  you  won't 
smile.  Maybe  you  will  learn  what  it  is  that  has 
clung  to  you  unseen  and  unknown." 

"I  demand  to  know." 

"No — by  God — you  shan't.  Not  until  I  know  all 
— myself.  Not  until  I  know  how  I  shall  pay." 

He  paused. 

"And  let  that  come  quickly,"  he  added  throwing 
his  open  hands  toward  the  ceiling  as  if  beseeching 
heathen  gods.  "Sudden,  swift  and  sure!" 

He  rushed  out  of  the  room. 

Night  after  night  she  heard  him  pacing  his  study 


The  Vanishing  Men          181 

floor  beneath  her  room.  He  walked  twenty  paces 
one  way,  twenty  at  right  angles,  twenty  more,  twenty 
more.  She  had  learned  the  count.  He  was  pacing 
off  a  square  around  his  big,  paper-laden  desk  in  the 
center  of  the  room.  She  went  to  sleep  with  that 
sound  of  a  caged  animal  in  her  ears;  she  awoke  in 
the  middle  of  the  night  when  the  moon  of  summer 
threw  the  shadows  of  the  plumed  branches  of  the 
great  trees  upon  her  floor,  hearing  that  faithful  beat 
of  footsteps  she  could  recall,  awaking  when  the 
bright  sunlight  was  prying  at  the  shutters  on  the 
western  windows  to  hear  the  measure  of  his  pacing. 

Once  she  had  awakened  in  the  night  and  heard 
no  sound.  She  had  crept  down  the  stairs  and  peered 
into  his  study.  He  was  crouching  down  below  the 
window  sill,  only  his  eyes  above,  like  a  man  in  am 
bush,  or  like  one  who  expects  an  attack  upon  his 
home,  watching  the  running  shadows  made  by  trees, 
shrubs,  wind  and  moon  upon  the  lawn. 

"What  are  you  doing,  Compton?"  she  asked. 

He  had  jumped  around  and  then  laughed. 

"What  are  you  doing  down  here?  You'll  catch 
cold.  I  was  thinking." 


182          The  Vanishing  Men 

"Thinking?    Thinking  of  what?" 

"Of  life." 

"And  what  about  it?" 

"How  I  love  it !"  he  had  exclaimed. 

A  few  days  later  he  rode  in  with  Brena  to  New 
.York.  A  new  spirit  had  come  into  him.  His  eyes 
were  filled  with  a  new  light;  his  voice  had  grown 
more  firm.  He  did  not  converse  with  his  young 
wife,  but  his  silence  had  changed  from  that  of  fear 
and  brooding  to  that  of  one  who  plans  and  weighs. 
On  his  countenance  was  a  new  expression,  in  his 
motions  something  of  the  former  dynamic  activity 
and  decisiveness. 

When  Brena  came  home  that  evening  she  asked 
if  he  was  there. 

"No,  ma'am,"  said  the  maid.  "There's  been  some 
one  telephoning  from  New  York.  His  lawyers, 
ma'am." 

"Oh,  Mr.  Lanfrew." 

"Yes,  ma'am.    Several  times,  ma'am." 

Brena  ate  dinner  alone. 

At  half-past  eight  the  telephone  rang  again. 

"I  will  answer  it,"  said  Brena. 


The  Vanishing  Men  183 

Again  it  was  Mr.  Lanf  rew.  He  wanted  to  speak 
to  Mr.  Parmalee.  It  was  about  some  legal  document 
that  had  been  drawn  that  morning. 

"But  Mr.  Parmalee  is  not  here  yet,"  said  Brena. 

"That's  strange,"  said  the  telephone  instrument. 
"That's  strange.  I  understood  he  was  going  home. 
I  understood  you  were  going  on  a  long  journey,  Mrs. 
Parmalee.  He  had  drawn  the  money  to  buy  tickets. 
I  thought  he  said  that  he  was  going  to  surprise  you. 
He  wanted  to  hurry  home  this  afternoon." 

"I'm  sorry  but  he  hasn't  come." 

"Or  sent  you  any  word?"  the  telephone  asked. 

"No  word,"  said  Brena. 

She  shuddered.  She  wondered  if  by  any  chance 
it  could  be  that  the  blow  had  fallen  at  last — the  final 
dread  conviction ;  she  felt  that  it  had. 

Brena  was  right.  Compton  Parmalee,  in  spite  of 
the  secret  efforts  of  the  police,  in  spite  of  all  that 
money  could  do  to  conduct  a  search  without  pub 
licity,  had  dissolved  as  completely  as  a  wisp  of 
smoke  in  the  blast  of  some  great  wind  of  heaven. 


PETER  DE WOLFE  drew  in  a  long  breath,  put  the 
palms  of  his  hands  upon  the  tightest  area  of  his 
waistcoat  over  his  expanded  chest,  threw  back  his 
head  and  exhaled  so  that  it  sounded  a  good  deal  like 
a  sigh. 

"Well,"  said  he.  "That  is  not  a  very  pretty 
story." 

The  lamp  had  gone  out;  the  slate  gray  light  of 
early  summer  dawn  filtered  through  the  chintz  cur 
tains  of  the  apartment  of  Brena  Selcoss.  She  was 
facing  this  watery  light,  her  beautiful  hands  folded 
in  her  lap,  her  dark  eyes  looking  into  profound  space. 
In  her  attitude  and  in  her  expression  Peter  saw  the 
suggestion  of  one  condemned,  who  has  awakened 
upon  the  day  of  execution  and  sits  upon  the  side  of 
a  prison  cot,  thinking. 

"No,  Peter,"  Brena  said  at  last.  "It  is  not  a 
pretty  story." 

184 


The  Vanishing  Men          185 

"I'm  sorry,"  he  said,  drawing  his  chair  nearer  to 
hers,  and  leaning  forward  he  took  her  hands  in  his. 
They  were  cold  as  marble.  She  shivered  as  one  who, 
having  no  sleep,  feels  the  dawn  as  a  wet  shroud. 
After  a  slow  inquiring  glance  around  the  little  cham 
ber  where  in  a  variety  of  soft  colors,  in  seasoned, 
suggestive  furniture  and  in  the  smaller  things, 
something  of  the  rich  diversity  of  herself  had  been 
expressed,  she  at  last  looked  at  Peter. 

"I  know,"  said  he.  "I  am  a  shaggy  brute.  The 
room  is  cold — a  kind  of  a  still,  stagnant  cold.  I'll 
light  the  fire." 

She  did  not  protest :  for  the  moment  her  own  will 
appeared  inert.  She  watched  him  dully  as  he  put 
the  lumps  of  soft  coal  into  the  typical  London  grate 
and  poked  them  meditatively  just  as  if  he  had  been 
born  an  Englishman  and  found  that  a  soft-coal  fire 
was  an  entertainment  as  well  as  a  utility.  She  al 
lowed  him  to  lead  her  to  the  little  upholstered  sofa 
which  he  had  pulled  in  front  of  the  yellow  flames 
and  to  put  her  wrap,  laid  aside  when  they  had  come 
in,  around  her  shoulders  and  to  put  his  hand  upon 


1 86          The  Vanishing  Men 

her  throat  and  cheek  as  he  stood  behind  her  still 
thinking. 

"That  is  an  ugly  story,"  he  said  as  if  determined 
that  there  might  be  no  question  as  to  the  premise 
upon  which  his  comments  would  be  based. 

Brena  nodded.  She  said:  "You  can  see  now, 
Peter,  why  the  one  moment  when  your  arms  were 
about  me  and  your  lips  were  on  mine  is  the  end.  If 
I  knew  I  was  free,  Peter,  I  could  not  see  more  of 
you.  I  could  not  bear  the  thought  that  you 
too " 

"Would  be  rubbed  out?"  he  finished  and  laughed. 

She  did  not  answer. 

"But  you  can't  believe "  he  began.  "Damn 

it — the  thing  is  too  absurd,  too  picturesque." 

He  considered  it  a  moment. 

"Why,  if  there  were  anything  in  it,  Brena,  dear 
one,  it  would  be  magnificent !" 

"You  forget  that  I  have  lived  close  to  this  thing. 
You  might  believe  too,  if  you  had  heard  not  my 
words  but  the  words  of  life  itself." 

"You've  told  me  all?" 

Brena,  sensing  the  presence  of  a  doubt,  rose  and, 


The  Vanishing  Men  187 

leaning  upon  the  mantel  with  her  face  bent  down 
toward  the  firelight,  waited  for  several  moments  be 
fore  she  said,  \vearily,  "Yes,  Peter — all." 

"And  others  know  ?" 

"Only  Muriel  Benham,"  she  answered.  "It  was 
when  I  was  ill.  I  had  fled  from  America.  It  was 
ghastly  there  and  I  had  the — what  can  I  say? — the 
instinct  for  flight.  I  went  to  France.  There  was 
pneumonia  and  after  that  I  found  my  little  retreat 
in  Beconshire.  Muriel  was  kind.  She  attended  to 
my  mail.  I  did  not  expect  a  letter  from  Lanf rew — > 
his  lawyer.  She  read  it.  There  was  a  reference  to 
— to  both — to  both." 

"I  understand,"  said  Peter.  "You  explained  a 
little;  you  had  to." 

He  walked  up  and  down  the  rug,  touching  the 
repetitions  of  the  pattern  with  the  toes  of  his  shoes. 

"How  long  has  it  been  since  he — went?"  he 
asked. 

"Over  three  years." 

"And  no  word?" 

"No  word.  Like  the  other — nothing — complete 
— nothing." 


i88          The  Vanishing  Men 

Peter  made  a  wry  face  as  if  the  phrases  had  made 
real  to  him  the  fact. 

"There  was  no  publicity?" 

"No — almost  none — a  paragraph  or  two.  Less 
perhaps  than  there  would  have  been  in  London  or 
Paris.  In  New  York  we  were  unattached — just 
people  with  a  little  money — making  no  acquaintances 
— nobody." 

Peter  nodded,  reflecting  that  after  all  there  could 
be  nowhere  on  earth  quite  the  obscurity  of  a  man 
with  a  million  or  two  living  on  his  income  in  New 
York. 

"What  became  of  his  money?"  he  asked. 

"It  is  there " 

"Untouched?" 

"Untouched." 

He  scowled.     He  said:  "The  house?" 

"Just  as  I  left  it — one  October  day.  Just  as  it 
was.  Nothing  changed,  I  suppose — insured,  and  left 
there.  A  haunted  place,  Peter — a  place  where  one 
expects  to  find  a  poor  murdered  creature  lying  face 
upward  just  beyond  every  door  sill.  I  fled.  I  even 


The  Vanishing  Men          189 

left  the  dog.  I  sent  back  a  telegram  to  a  neighbor 
— the  caretaker — and  gave  him  the  beast." 

"You  didn't  speak  of  a  dog." 

"I  forgot — a  horror  of  a  beast,  turned  loose  inside 
the  walls  at  night  when  the  gate  was  closed.  It  was 
his  dog,  bought  a  few  months  before — a  cross  be 
tween  a  Great  Dane  and  bloodhound — a  thing  with 
white  fangs.  They  had  to  shoot  him,  I've  heard." 

Peter,  walking  to  the  table,  picked  up  a  small 
bronze  Buddha  upon  whose  face  there  was  a  satanic 
grin  and  with  great  seriousness  the  man  gazed  back 
at  the  heathen  thing  for  several  minutes. 

"What  about  this — whoever  it  was — this  symbol, 
half  bird  and  half  snake — Kuk-ul-can?  You  never 
found  it  again?" 

"Yes,"  said  Brena. 

"You  found  it?"    He  appeared  unable  to  believe. 

"Yes,"  she  said.  "I  had  kept  the  purse.  It  be 
longed  to  my  mother.  I  kept  it  In  the  lining — last 
year— I  found  the  scrap  of  paper." 

"It's  here?"  asked  Peter  with  a  marked  eager 
ness. 

"Yes."    She  got  up  again,  brushed  the  stray  red- 


190          The  Vanishing  Men 

gold  hair  from  her  high  calm  forehead  and  opened 
a  box  on  the  bookshelves.  When  she  gave  the  torn 
bit  to  Peter,  she  did  not  follow  it  with  her  glance; 
her  gesture  gave  the  impression  that  she  regarded 
the  scrap  of  paper  as  of  little  consequence. 

Peter,  however,  was  interested.  He  threw  his 
cigarette  into  the  fire  and  walking  to  the  window 
examined  the  crude  drawing,  looked  at  the  two 
words  scrawled  beneath  and  pushing  aside  the  cur 
tains  held  the  scrap  up  to  the  gray  light. 

He  was  interrupted  by  Brena's  voice.  It  was  filled 
with  the  tone  of  agony,  of  weariness,  of  sickness  of 
soul. 

"Peter,  be  merciful." 

He  wheeled  about.  She  had  been  sitting  gazing 
at  him. 

"Can't  you  see,  Peter,  that  you  must  say  good-by 
to  me?  Can't  you  see  that  it  is  torture  not  to  say 
good-by?  Can't  you  see,  Peter,  that  I  want  you  to 
go,  that  I  want  to  go  myself — back  to  Beconshire,  to 
Beconshire,  to  my  garden,  my  books,  the  wide  view 
over  the  sweep  of  open  country?  Can't  you  see  that 
I  want  the  memory  of  these  days  to  end  with  your 


The  Vanishing  Men          191 

kiss — that  now  we  are  only  obliterating  that  mem 
ory?" 

He  came  back  toward  her  and  poking  the  fire 
again  he  laughed  to  himself. 

"You  don't  think  there  is  to  be  an  ending — now  ?" 
he  asked  after  a  moment. 

She  looked  at  him  with  her  eyes  filled  with  won 
derment. 

"Oh,  no,"  said  he.  "No  ending,  dear  one.  Here's 
where  we  begin.  There's  just  some  cold  hard  busi 
ness  to  do  now.  If  it  weren't  for  that  I'd  be  sitting 
there  beside  you  holding  you  very  tight  until  we 
were  found  by  the  authorities  starved  to  death." 

"Peter!" 

"Yes.  I  mean  it.  That  wasn't  a  pretty  story. 
But  it  hasn't  jarred  me,  Brena.  We've  definite  work 
cut  out  for  us.  First  we've  the  job  of  getting  your 
freedom — or  finding  out  and  proving  that  some 
death-dealing  agency  has  given  it  to  you  already. 
Then  we'll  uncover  this  trail  of  fear  that  tracks  you, 
dear.  It's  the  work  first." 

"You  dare " 

"Dare?"  said  Peter.    "Don't  make  fun  of  me.    Do 


192          The  Vanishing  Men 

you  suppose  I'd  quit  now?  I  want  to  go  and  get 
the  facts,  Brena.  I  want  to  knock  to  pieces  this 
hideous  waiting  you've  done — this  menace.  I  want 
to  come  and  get  you  then,  Brena — if  you  love  me." 

"Love  you,  Peter?"  She  buried  her  face  in  her 
hands. 

He  stood  before  her,  looking  down,  and  his  hands 
would  have  taken  her  head  between  them  if  he  had 
permitted  them  to  exercise  a  will  that  directed  them 
as  if  flesh  and  bone  and  sinew  had  volition  of  their 
own. 

"I  love  you,  Peter?"  she  said  without  looking  up. 
"Why,  I  love  you  as  I  never  knew  love  could  be." 

"Then  you  help  me  to  be  strong,"  he  commanded. 
"We've  got  to  be  Spartans  now.  You're  going  back 
to  Beconshire  to-day — I'm  going  to  America  on  the 
first  boat  that  I  can  get — passage  or  stowaway." 

She  looked  up  amazed. 

"I  want  this  scrap  of  paper,"  he  said.  "I  want 
the  keys,  if  you've  got  'em,  to  that  house  up  the 
Hudson.  I  want  a  letter  to  Lanfrew,  the  lawyer. 
I  want  your  permission  to  do  anything  I  want — 
burn  the  house  down,  perhaps.  I  may  cable  you 


The  Vanishing  Men          193 

for  more  facts  if  I  want  them.  I'm  going  out  now 
to  cable  some  persons  on  my  own  list,  Brena." 

"It  is  useless,"  she  said  wearily.  "You  forget  I've 
had  nearly  four  years  of  it — leading  nowhere,  ex 
plaining  nothing,  dear.  It  will  only  cause  me  new 
humiliation — perhaps  drag  my  name " 

"No,  it  won't,"  he  said,  "I'm  going  to  do  the  job 
myself." 

"Please "  she  began. 

Peter  smiled  grimly  as  he  held  up  his  hand. 

"Well,  I'm  no  detective,  Brena,  I'll  admit.  I  am 
glad  to  be  able  to  tell  you  that  I  am  not  a  Master 
Mind,  or  a  great  Analyst  or  any  other  kind  of  a  red 
or  yellow  bound  sleuth.  I  didn't  even  look  for  wire 
less  apparatus  in  Central  Park  before  I  joined  the 
Army.  Spies  and  mysteries  bore  me  to  death." 

He  chuckled,  however,  as  if  glad  that  he  was 
alive. 

"I'm  more  or  less  an  idler  whose  time  is  almost 
all  taken  up  in  one  way  or  another.  I'm  a  New  York 
bachelor  on  the  loose  who  has  written  a  little  verse 
and  killed  a  few  Germans,  for  which  I  have  suffered 
a  definite  nausea  afterward,  as  I  would  not  confess 


194          The  Vanishing  Men 

to  anyone  else.  I'm  no  unraveler  of  tangled  skeins. 
But " 

She  took  his  hand  and  pressed  its  back  against 
her  cheek. 

"But !"  Peter  repeated.  "But— I'm  going  to 

let  some  sunshine  in  upon  this  thing  if  I  break  my 
neck — there's  only  one  thing  that's  hard " 

She  asked  him  to  tell  her. 

"To  leave  you,"  he  said.  "It's  going  to  tear  the 
roots  like  pulling  up  grass." 

Brena,  arising,  threw  the  wrap  aside  and  paced 
back  and  forth,  as  he  had  paced,  with  her  hands 
examining  each  other  as  if  they  were  strangers  met 
for  the  first  time.  When  she  stopped  her  great  dark 
eyes  were  wet  and  filled  with  the  old  look  of  fear. 

"You  shall  not  throw  yourself  away,  Peter,"  she 
said  with  a  breaking  voice. 

"Nonsense." 

"But  you  don't  know,  Peter !" 

"All  that  you  know." 

"If  it  happened  to  you " 

"Yes?"  asked  Peter  with  his  lips  closing  tightly 
over  the  question. 


The  Vanishing  Men  195 

"It  would  no  longer  be  fear  alone,  Peter ;  it  would 
be  grief  too  great  to  bear!" 

He  was  silent :  perhaps  shaken  for  the  moment. 

She  ran  to  him,  seizing  his  coat,  his  wrists,  his 
neck,  one  after  the  other,  as  if  no  strength  was  hers 
to  hold  him  back. 

"Don't,"  said  he. 

She  was  still. 

"I  shall  do  as  I  said,  Brena.  No  harm  will  come 
to  me.  None  ever  does.  I  shall  do  it  alone  if  need 
be.  Or  we  can  do  it  together.  How's  your  cour- 
age?" 

She  looked  long  and  searchingly  into  his  steady 
blue  eyes. 

"What  do  you  want  me  to  do,  Peter?" 

"I  want  you  to  write  those  letters  for  me.  That's 
all  I  need  now.  I  want  you  to  go  back  to  Becon- 
shire  and  wait  till  you  hear." 

"Hear  from  you  ?"  she  said  in  shaking  voice. 

"Yes — you'll  hear  from  me,"  he  said.  "Why,  my 
Lord,  Brena,  there's  no  danger  to  me.  That's 
grotesque  absurdity.  I  rather  wish  there  were  dan- 


196          The  Vanishing  Men 

ger.  It's  a  tonic  T  Anyhow  I'll  give  you  my  own 
lawyer's  address." 

She  glanced  once  more  into  his  smile  and  then, 
with  something  of  the  manner  of  a  proud  mother, 
she  looked  fondly  from  head  to  foot  of  him,  at  his 
lean,  sinewy  figure,  at  the  clearness  of  his  eyes,  the 
curve  at  his  temples,  the  outdoor  cleanliness  of  his 
skin.  There  was  a  suggestion  of  possession  in  this 
quick  inspection  of  hers,  a  suggestion  that  he  was 
hers  as  much  as  if  she  had  created  him.  But  as  if, 
now,  she  belonged  to  him,  she  did  his  bidding. 

When  she  had  finished  writing  at  the  little  antique 
desk,  she  threw  the  red  feather  of  the  quill  pen  onto 
the  table. 

Peter  had  been  thinking. 

"Once  more,"  he  said. 

He  took  her  into  his  arms,  holding  her  head  close 
to  his  shoulder ;  he  turned  her  chin  up  with  the  palm 
of  his  hand  and  pressed  again  his  lips  upon  hers. 
He  could  hear  the  watch  in  his  own  pocket  ticking 
away  the  seconds.  He  could  hear  her  heart  beating 
a  slower  rhythm. 


The  Vanishing  Men  197 

"A  long  draught,"  he  said  at  last.  "I  could  not  go 
so  thirsty — away." 

"You  mustn't  go." 

"Brena,  dear  one,"  he  said.  "There  is  only  one 
thing  to  do  now  and  that  must  be  done.  Let's  set 
our  faces  like  flint.  I  think  after  all " 

She  knew  as  if  by  magic  that  which  he  was  going 
to  say. 

"That  there  is  more  love  in  going  than  in  staying 
— for  both  of  us." 

"Yes,"  said  Peter  touching  her  forehead  again. 
"Good-by." 

He  closed  the  door  quietly. 

"Peter!"  she  called  from  behind  it. 

He  continued  down  the  carpeted  stairs  and  out 
into  the  first  morning  sunlight  that  came  tumbling 
down  over  the  chimney  pots  into  the  narrow  street. 

"Vanished?"  he  said  aloud.  "What  piffle!  And 
yet " 

He  looked  about  him :  the  street  was  empty  except 
for  one  small  child  who  was  sweeping  the  sidewalk 
with  a  broom  three  times  the  youngster's  own 
height 


198          The  Vanishing  Men 

"Good  morning,"  said  Peter. 

"S'fine  mornin',"  the  one  in  kilts  said. 

"Finest  ever,  son,"  returned  Peter. 

"I  ain't  a  boy;  I'm  a  girl,  sir." 

"Well,  it's  a  fine  morning  in  any  case." 

Peter  walked  on,  thinking;  he  had  a  lot  of  think 
ing  to  do. 

It  added  somewhat  to  his  need  of  thinking  when 
he  found  at  the  steamship  dock  in  Liverpool  a  plain 
envelope  addressed  to  him  in  which  was  a  scrap  of 
torn  paper.  Upon  it  in  typewritten  letters  and  un 
signed  were  the  words : 

"Be  warned  before  it  is  too  late." 

Peter  raised  the  scrap  of  paper  to  his  nose;  it 
was  pungent  with  an  odor  of  some  strong  chemical. 

He  stood  thinking  for  a  moment,  blinking  at  the 
reds  and  grays  and  browns  of  the  shipping  in  Liver 
pool  Harbor  and  the  distant  sky  veiled  with  smut 
and  smoke  of  city  and  barred  by  smokestacks  and 
masts. 

"Damn  them — whoever  they  are,"  he  said.  "This 
time  they've  got  a  fight  on  their  hands." 


XIII 

PETER  had  spent  eight  days  upon  the  sea  and  had 
landed  on  his  own  soil  again  before  he  came  to  the 
full  realization  that  mere  reasoning  will  not  solve 
baffling  problems  such  as  that  upon  the  untangling 
of  which  he  now  had  so  much  at  stake. 

He  had  come  into  New  York  without  word  to 
his  acquaintances;  only  Colby  Pennington  of  Pen 
nington,  Gould  and  Goodhue,  who  was  the  son  of  the 
elder  DeWolfe's  attorney,  knew  of  Peter's  return 
from  his  long  absence.  This  lean,  unemotional 
lawyer  looked  upon  his  young  client,  put  in  hand  by 
the  death  of  the  elder  Pennington,  as  he  would  upon 
an  odd  heirloom  without  much  intrinsic  value.  The 
law  business  did  not  pay  much  in  spite  of  the  size 
of  the  DeWolfe  estate  and  the  younger  DeWolfe 
was  considered  by  those  who  are  conventional,  regu 
lar  and  of  stock  patterns,  as  a  rather  uncertain  mix 
ture  of  quantity  and  quality. 

Pennington  had  never  expected  Peter  to  explode 

199 


20O         The  Vanishing  Men 

or  disgrace  himself,  but  the  lawyer  belonged  to  a  type 
of  correct  and  regular  life  which  does  not  fear  de 
partures  from  correctness  and  regularity  and  stock 
patterns  of  human  beings  as  much  because  of  known 
hazards  as  because  of  the  unknown  hazards  which 
those  who  always  play  safe  imagine  lie  in  ambush 
behind  independence  and  originality  and  imagina 
tion.  For  instance  it  would  have  disturbed  the  chilly 
Colby  to  have  known  that  Peter  was  returning  from 
a  record  of  hard  action,  wounds  and  decoration, 
without  a  word  to  his  friends,  and  that  instead  of 
going  to  his  club,  he  went,  like  a  returning  ghost, 
to  his  old  apartment  where  the  heat  of  the  summer 
had  been  locked  in  and  where  for  many  months  the 
severe  portrait  of  the  elder  DeWolfe  had  directed 
an  unblinking  frowning  gaze  at  the  door  waiting 
for  the  son's  return.  Such  a  return  was  not  cut  ac 
cording  to  approved  fashion  and  if  Pennington  had 
known  of  its  nature  he  would  have  felt  a  vague 
anxiety. 

Peter  knowing  this  merely  asked,  after  a  greet 
ing,  whether  any  cables  had  come  for  him;  finding 
that  there  were  none  he  went  for  a  lonely  dinner  and 


The  Vanishing  Men          201 

a  night  alone  in  his  apartment  with  his  trunks  stand 
ing  around  among  the  linen-covered  chairs  like  fat, 
solid  men  whom  Peter  had  called  in  for  conference. 

The  fact  was  that  Peter  had  determined  to  hold 
a  conference  with  himself.  He  had  opened  the 
musty  apartment  which  had  been  his  bachelor  re 
treat  for  several  years;  there  had  entered  only  the 
unstirring,  hushed  air  which,  as  if  itself  exhausted 
by  the  day's  heat,  hung  in  a  night  haze  over  the  city 
below  his  high  windows  and  dimmed  the  blinking, 
winking  lights  across  the  Park.  The  muffled  sound 
of  a  hurdy-gurdy  that  had  invaded  this  district  of 
pretense  and  high  rents,  like  a  shabby  minstrel  of  the 
poor  ground  out  its  worn-out  war  tunes  to  forbid 
ding,  boarded-up  residences  in  a  forlorn  hope  of 
largess.  The  night  was  not  one  for  clear  thinking, 
but  Peter,  having  tied  the  waist  string  of  his  pa 
jamas,  sat  down  in  an  old  leather  chair  before  the 
empty  fireplace,  and  wiping  his  forehead  stared  into 
the  chimney  back. 

During  the  voyage  he  had  failed  to  think  to  a  re 
sult  of  any  kind,  and  the  reasons  were  two.  He  de 
fined  them  novr  readily  enough:  they  were  the  in- 


2O2          The  Vanishing  Men 

fluence  of  the  sea  and  the  memory  of  Brena.  There 
had  been  the  spell  of  the  sea — the  sea  that  Peter 
loved  so  well,  the  personality  of  the  sea  that  could 
be  a  basin  of  iridescent  oil  in  a  tropic  calm,  an 
enigma  of  chill  gray  mist-enveloped  soul,  a  fury  of 
glorious  racing  rage,  a  beam  of  strange  quiet  mes 
sages  from  whining,  crooning  lands  at  the  other  ends 
of  the  earth,  a  voice  from  far  and  unseen  peoples,  a 
yielder  of  mysteries  belched  forth  from  its  amethyst 
and  beryl  depths,  a  thing  able  to  cover,  with  a  superb 
superiority  to  the  trivialities  of  life  and  death,  the 
last  trace  of  all  that  it  takes  into  the  confidence  of 
its  eternal  peace.  The  sea  had  invited  Peter  to  more 
musing  upon  his  problem  but  it  had  erased  days  with 
its  sweep  of  sunlight  and  its  salt  spray  and  with  its 
miracle  of  obliterating  hours  in  the  flow  of  a  great 
eternity. 

The  memory  of  Brena,  whose  personality  had 
seemed  as  everlasting  as  that  of  the  sea  itself,  had 
done  its  part.  She  had  appeared,  but  with  irritating 
indistinctness,  before  his  eyes  and  seeking  to  feel  by 
reaction  the  touch  of  her  lips,  to  see  again  with  all 
the  definition  of  reality,  her  dark  eyes  and  her  red- 


The  Vanishing  Men          203 

gold  hair,  to  hear  her  voice,  to  sense  the  warmth  of 
her  lithe,  flexible  body,  to  recall  the  miracle  by  which 
for  the  first  time  in  his  life  spiritual  love,  the  love 
of  companionship  and  the  love  of  woman  had  been 
all  woven  into  one  fabric,  he  had  realized  more 
than  when  he  had  been  with  her,  the  stability 
of  an  affection  that  had  come  upon  him  with  a  fierce, 
impetuous  descent.  Peter  now  realized  that  he  had 
been  dreaming  away  the  days  of  his  journey  lost  in 
the  spirit  of  the  sea  and  in  the  memories  of  the 
strange  girl  whose  future  might  depend  upon  his 
success  or  failure  in  striking  off  the  shackles  of  fear. 
To  avert  the  haunting  destiny,  to  dissipate  the 
shadowing  mystery  that  followed  in  her  track,  deal 
ing  its  fatal  dark  thrusts  in  the  dark  to  the  men  who 
played  a  part  in  her  life  had  been  a  job  he  had  be 
gun  badly. 

Once  more  Peter  reviewed  the  evidence  already 
in  his  hands  with  the  vague  hope  that  from  it  a  con 
clusion  would  suddenly  stand  forth,  just  as  one 
again  looks  through  a  pile  of  papers  for  the  twentieth 
time  for  one  paper  that  the  senses  have  proclaimed 
repeatedly  is  not  there. 


204         The  Vanishing  Men 

As  on  other  occasions  when  he  weighed  the  fact 
he  was  not  disposed  to  give  weight  to  the  idea  that 
any  secret  band,  acting  perhaps  under  oath  of 
vengeance  or  of  loyalty,  was  exercising  an  influence 
upon  the  life  of  Brena  Selcoss.  Her  father's  con 
nection  with  the  secret  society  revolutionaries  in 
Greece  and  the  political  plottings  of  her  maternal 
grandfather,  the  famous  Tom  Vaughn,  might  have 
appeared  to  give  some  color  to  the  idea,  but  Peter 
knew  that  the  arm  of  a  secret  band,  no  matter  how 
long  it  might  be  at  its  full  development,  no  matter 
how  it  might  deliver  knife  thrusts  at  the  ends  of  the 
earth  on  behalf  of  a  cause,  withers  quickly  when 
its  inspiration  is  gone.  It  was  not  likely  that  after 
a  lapse  of  more  than  half  a  century  the  power  of 
such  an  arm  would  survive  nor  that  it  would  extend 
far  away  and  across  the  years  either  to  protect  or 
blast  the  life  of  a  girl,  who,  whatever  she  had  since 
become  in  her  wonderful  development,  was,  at  first, 
humble  and  forgotten  and  alone. 

To  be  sure,  Peter  thought  the  last  words  of  her 
father  had  made  reference  to  an  unnamed  assurance 
that  if  Brena  were  to  be  menaced,  a  protecting  force 


The  Vanishing  Men          205 

would  aid  her.  These,  however,  were  the  words  of 
an  impractical  dreamer  who  having  failed  to  provide 
against  all  dangers  to  his  orphaned  daughter  might 
naturally  enough,  when  facing  death,  have  voiced  a 
vehement  faith,  hoping  that  it  would  help  to  make 
up  in  part  for  a  lack  of  works.  Peter  put  this  evi 
dence  behind  him  as  belonging  to  that  class  of  im 
probabilities  that  only  those  who  love  to  make  more 
mystery  rather  than  to  lessen  it,  seize  with  all  the 
joy  of  the  amateur  secret  service  men  who  had 
amused  Peter  so  much  during  the  war. 

The  vital  facts  as  Peter  saw  them  were  to  be 
found  among  those  which  attended  the  disappear 
ance  of  men — men  of  different  types  who  at  mo 
ments  some  years  apart  had  sunk  to  the  bottom  of 
non-existence  like  two  plummets. 

One  of  these  men,  Jim  Hennepin,  had  gone  to  his 
end  without  fear;  he  had  only  shown  excitement. 
He  had  hinted  that  some  call  or  message  of 
great  advantage  had  come  to  him.  At  the  time  he 
left  he  had  given,  apparently  without  intention,  a 
scrap  of  paper  bearing  the  symbolic  figure  of  the 
feathered  snake — the  Kuk-ul-can,  god  of  the  Mayan 


206          The  Vanishing  Men 

civilization.  According  to  Parmalee,  who  not  only 
had  been  much  in  the  desert  country  but  who  was 
a  student  of  its  history  and  a  collector  of  books 
bearing  upon  its  antiquities,  the  appearance  of  this 
symbol  suggested  the  Southwestern  United  States 
or  Mexico. 

When,  however,  Parmalee  himself  had  disap 
peared  less  than  four  years  later  it  was  at  the  end 
of  a  long  period  in  which  he  indicated  beyond  doubt 
that  he  had  some  knowledge,  however  vague,  of  the 
danger  that  threatened  him.  Peter  had  often  on  his 
voyage  across  the  Atlantic,  squeezed  all  the  conclu 
sions  possible  from  the  facts  bearing  upon  whether 
Parmalee  feared  a  known  enemy  or  one  unknown. 
Brena's  strange  husband  at  times  indicated  a  fear 
of  a  known  and  human  agency;  when  he  had  shot 
at  an  imaginary  intruder  in  their  New  York  apart 
ment  he  had  said,  "I  thought  it  was  him,"  a  remark 
that  he  had  afterward  explained  by  saying  he  re 
ferred  to  the  burglar  that  he  believed  had  entered. 
Parmalee's  violent  objection  to  the  exhibition  of 
Brena's  portrait  with  her  name  attached  might  well 
have  been  the  objection  of  a  man  who  feared  that 


The  Vanishing  Men          207 

some  one  t>y  chance  seeing  the  picture  and  recog 
nizing  it  would  trace  the  original  by  inquiries  ad 
dressed  to  the  artist. 

What  had  it  meant  that  this  extraordinary  man 
had  surrounded  his  life  with  defenses  as  if  fore 
warned  of  his  fate  ?  He  employed  only  servants  he 
knew,  he  built  defensive  walls,  put  up  bars  at  his 
windows,  retained  the  chauffeur,  Paul,  because  the 
man  would  be  handy  with  his  fists  in  an  emergency, 
he  bought  a  fanged  mongrel  beast  to  roam  about  the 
grounds  at  night.  He  lived  in  a  terror  which 
burned  his  nerves  and  chilled  his  heart,  that  drove 
him  jibbering  to  the  bottle  and  he  indicated  more 
than  once  that  this  was  all  due  to  his  wife — that 
it  was  she  who  dragged  this  trail  of  unknown  horror. 

But  when  he  had  gone — vanished  without  trace, 
he,  like  Jim  Hennepin,  went  willingly. 

What  was  the  bait?  In  Hennepin's  case  it  had 
been  money.  This  could  not  have  drawn  Parma- 
lee. 

Peter  got  up  and  looked  out  over  the  city  swelter 
ing  in  the  purple  hazy  summer  night,  blinking  its 


2o8          The  Vanishing  Men 

yellow  eyes  as  if  these  eyes  were  full  of  salty  perspi 
ration. 

Well,  the  two  men  had  gone  willingly  and  had 
thereafter  disappeared  as  completely  as  wisps  of 
smoke  in  a  tempest  or  raindrops  on  the  sea.  Some 
force  drew  them,  Peter  told  himself,  some  force 
that  perhaps  was  capable  of  calling  craftily  to  that 
which  in  each  man  would  respond.  Parmalee  had 
pretended  to  some  knowledge  of  what  this  force  was. 
How  did  he  know  ? 

Peter  walked  back  to  the  dark  oak  mantel  and 
opening  his  wallet  that  lay  there  he  took  out  the 
sheet  of  paper  which  had  told  him  of  his  own 
danger.  There  was  the  explanation !  Parmalee  too 
had  been  warned.  But  in  spite  of  that  warning  he 
too  had  gone — had  been  dissolved,  had  been  wiped 
out  like  a  tiny  chalk  mark  by  a  giant  thumb. 

And  what  conclusion  could  be  drawn  from  all  of 
this — all  that  Peter  knew  ?  He  saw  it  suddenly.  He 
had  been  tumbling  over  and  over  again  into  the 
error  that  pitfalls  so  many  of  his  countrymen;  he 
wanted  to  assume  the  facts  upon  which  a  conclusion 
is  to  be  based.  Often  he  had  seen  the  same  delusive 


The  Vanishing  Men          209 

yearning  when  a  political  leader  with  noble  senti 
ments  and  high-sounding  purposes  based  his  pro 
gram  upon  a  world  not  as  it  is  but  as  good  men 
would  like  to  have  it  and  tolled,  after  him,  those 
persons  who  liked  to  call  themselves  idealists!  He 
had  seen  so  much  conclusion  that  would  have  been 
right  if  only  it  could  have  been  based  upon  the  facts ! 
Peter  knew  now,  as  if  by  a  sudden  humiliating 
revelation,  that  he  had  been  foolish  to  even  attempt 
the  method  of  the  great  analysts,  as  they  are  called, 
who  are  always  conveniently  provided  with  every 
vital  fact  beforehand;  he  knew  that  what  he  must 
get  was  more  evidence. 

On  his  key  ring  he  looked  for  the  key  to  Parma- 
lee's  house  up  the  Hudson. 

He  had  forgotten  perhaps  another  failing  of  some 
of  his  countrymen;  as  Peter  once  said  himself,  they 
founded  beliefs  upon  the  wish  to  believe;  it  never 
was  suggested  to  DeWolfe  that  in  spite  of  its  ex 
travagance,  any  part  of  the  story  told  by  Brena 
Selcoss  might  not  be  true. 

He  loved  her. 


XIV 

PETER,  who  had  presented  Brena's  letter  to  the 
caretaker  of  the  Parmalee  estate  and  had  received  a 
few  sullen  references  to  the  fact  that  the  place  was 
a  great  bother  and  was  said  by  many  persons  in  the 
village  to  be  a  house  of  evil  influences,  had  been 
directed  up  the  long  hill  under  an  archway  of  drip 
ping  trees  and  stood  at  last  at  the  very  gate  which 
Parmalee  in  his  alcoholic  fury  had  shaken  as  he 
invited  his  imaginary  persecutors  to  attack  him. 

The  change  in  the  weather,  brought  about  by  the 
sudden  turning  landward  of  a  heavy  Atlantic  storm, 
had  transformed  midsummer  into  chill,  wet  March. 
The  cold,  damp  wind  swept  across  the  top  of  the  hill, 
tossing  the  arms  of  the  trees  within  the  walled  en 
closure  to  which  the  gate  gave  entrance,  so  that  these 
arms  appeared  to  be  assaulting  the  French  roof  of 
the  square  gloomy  old  house,  as  if  that  house  had 
committed  some  crime.  Weeds  and  rank  growth  had 
sprung  up  along  the  wall  and  behind  the  gate  in  the 

2IO 


The  Vanishing  Men          211 

crevices  of  the  flagstones  of  the  walk;  each  stalk, 
bending  with  the  night's  rain,  shed  drops  of  water 
like  a  weeping  mourner.  Peter,  having  glanced  up 
at  the  windows  behind  which  Brena  had  heard  the 
winds  of  winter  whine  and  complain  and  had 
watched  the  pale  moon  throw  dancing  shadows  on 
the  dank  lawn,  felt  his  own  skin  shrink  in  response 
to  the  thought  of  all  that  a  young  girl  must  have 
suffered  here.  He  would  square  the  account  for  her ! 
The  squeak  of  the  caretaker's  key  in  the  rusty 
lock  of  the  gate  started  up  a  dozen  crows,  cawing 
madly  as  if  driven  from  some  carrion  feast.  When 
Peter  had  used  Brena's  key  to  unlock  the  front  door, 
hideous  with  its  black  walnut  carvings  and  its  stained 
and  leaded  glass,  the  odor  of  dust  and  decay  filled 
his  nose  as  with  a  dry  and  suffocating  powder. 
Without  volition  of  his  own  his  ears  strained  to 
hear  some  sound,  some  retreating  footsteps,  some 
whispered  voice  in  that  house,  but  none  came;  the 
place  was  as  still  as  a  dry  cave.  In  this  stillness, 
in  the  smell  of  the  dead  air,  there  was  the  faint 
tremor  of  fear  as  if  fear  once  having  taken  abode 
in  this  gloomy  old  residence,  was  not  to  be  evicted, 


212          The  Vanishing  Men 

as  if  indeed  it  clung  when  all  other  personalities 
had  gone  just  as  the  odor  of  dead  smoke  remains 
long  after  the  living  fire  has  grown  cold. 

With  a  gesture  of  impatience  Peter  closed  the  door 
behind  him  and  walked  toward  the  foot  of  the  long, 
austere  flight  of  black  walnut  stairs.  He  could  see 
from  his  position  the  gray  light  coming  through 
barred  windows  into  the  dining-room  where  on  the 
table — a  beautiful  Chippendale,  strangely  out  of 
place  in  the  unpleasant,  high  studded  proportions  of 
the  room — there  sat  a  saucer  with  a  spoon  in  it  as 
if  some  ghostly  presence  had  just  that  moment 
arisen  from  a  lonely  bowl  of  phantom  gruel.  The 
door  nearer  the  front  of  the  house,  the  entrance  no 
doubt  to  the  library  of  Parmalee,  was  almost  closed; 
Peter  glanced  at  it  and  ascended  the  stairs. 

A  thin  film  of  dust  covered  everything.  It  was 
evidence  of  the  caretaker's  belief  that  no  one  would 
quickly  return  to  note  his  delinquencies.  Otherwise 
the  house  might  have  been  untouched  from  the  mo 
ment  when,  in  a  spirit  of  pursued  flight,  Brena  had 
shut  the  doors  for  the  last  time.  A  novel  had  been 
put  upon  a  table  in  the  upper  hall,  its  pages  spread 


The  Vanishing  Men          213 

downward  where  a  reader  had  left  it;  in  Brena's 
own  chamber  the  tray  upon  the  dressing  table  still 
contained  scattered  pins  and  a  railroad  conductor's 
receipt  for  a  cash  fare.  In  the  bathroom  a  towel 
hung  over  the  edge  of  the  tub  as  if  a  bather  had 
just  come  from  the  morning  plunge  and  only  the 
stripped  beds  spoke  of  the  vacancy  of  the  hollow- 
sounding  rooms.  To  Peter,  the  whole  house  except 
for  that  part  which  she  had  occupied,  seemed  to  be 
filled  with  unpleasant  ghosts  of  the  personalities 
that  had  lived  in  it.  He  opened  no  door  without  the 
feeling  that  one  of  these  invisible  beings  had  just 
stepped  out  of  the  chamber  from  another  exit.  The 
stairs  up  which  he  had  climbed  were  complaining 
gently,  as  if  feet  were  following  his;  somewhere 
there  sounded  the  fluttering  of  soft  wings — a  star 
tling  noise,  but  explained  by  the  dead  chimney  swal 
low  that  lay  below  the  sill  of  one  of  the  darkened 
windows — a  tiny  inert  symbol  of  tragic  imprison 
ment  and  death. 

Peter  had  found  nothing  in  his  survey  of  the 
house  that  could  contribute  to  his  purpose;  he  had 
looked  without  more  reason  for  looking  than  a 


214          The  Vanishing  Men 

desire  to  see  where  Brena  had  lived  and  to  confirm 
his  belief  that  except  in  the  library  that  had  been 
used  by  Parmalee  nothing  could  be  found  of  any 
significance.  It  was  not  probable,  he  thought,  that  he 
would  open  some  door  to  find  the  cotton  broker's 
withering  corpse  stretched  out  with  the  handle  of  a 
murderer's  knife  still  sticking  up  from  the  collapsed 
ribs.  He  was  about  to  return  to  the  lower  floor 
when  he  saw  in  front  of  him  upon  the  bare  dusty 
varnished  boards  a  distinct  print  of  a  human  foot. 
It  was  a  small,  well-formed  foot  that  had  made  this 
print — and  the  next  beyond  and  the  next — until 
they  stopped  where  the  stair  carpet  began. 

There  sprang  into  his  mind  the  gibbering  ref 
erence  of  Parmalee  to  footprints,  followed  imme 
diately  by  the  thought  that  these  might  be  the  rec 
ord  of  Brena's  own  steps  and  then  as  quickly  by  the 
thought  that  Brena  had  left  long  before  this  layer 
of  dust  had  accumulated.  He  found  himself  listen 
ing  now,  the  victim  for  the  moment  of  fear,  as  if 
suddenly  the  contagion  had  reached  him.  At  last 
he  laughed.  The  prints  were  not  those  of  a  man: 
they  might  be  those  of  a  woman  but  the  chances 


The  Vanishing  Men          215 

were  overwhelmingly  in  favor  of  their  being  made 
by  the  caretaker's  young  barefoot  boy.  Peter  smiled 
again  and  went  down  the  stairs. 

At  the  bottom  of  this  flight  above  the  hall  stand 
was  an  old  carved  Chinese  frame  holding  a  dusty 
mirror.  Peter  glanced  at  this  mirror,  saw  himself, 
stopped.  The  expression  on  his  own  face  alarmed 
him.  He  imagined  that  he  was  less  ruddy,  more 
gray  of  skin,  that  he  had  caught  himself  in  the  un 
conscious  pose  of  a  man  who  involuntarily  has  be 
gun  to  walk  softly  and  look  about  alertly,  that  upon 
the  face  reflected  in  the  glass  was  the  first  faint 
expression  of  terror  written  not  as  it  is  written 
upon  the  face  of  a  man  who  is  a  coward  before 
known  dangers,  for  Peter  whatever  he  might  be 
could  never  wear  that  look,  but  the  dim  suggestion 
of  fear  of  unknown  dangers  and  of  subtle  influences, 
that  may  some  day  be  engraved  without  regard  to 
the  courage  or  will  of  the  individual  upon  any 
sensitive  human  countenance. 

Peter  had  an  unpleasant  idea ;  it  was  that  his  sub 
conscious  self  was  endeavoring  to  transmit  to  his 
conscious  self  some  message  of  warning.  For  the 


216          The  Vanishing  Men 

first  time  he  felt  the  need  to  summon  to  his  aid  his 
clearest  thought,  his  most  alert  state  of  mind,  his 
keenest  observations. 

Fortunately  perhaps  this  moment  of  realization 
came  to  him  as  he  opened  the  door  of  Parmalee's 
study.  It  commanded  him  to  squeeze  out  of  his  first 
visit  to  that  square  chamber,  lined  with  books  to  the 
ceiling  in  the  style  of  old-fashioned  libraries,  the 
most  that  orderly  investigation  could  disclose. 

That  many  things  had  been  disturbed  since  the 
moment  when  Parmalee  had  walked  out  into 
oblivion  was  evident.  The  correspondence  on  the 
large  desk  in  the  center  of  the  room  had  been  gath 
ered  into  a  neat  pile  and  tied  with  string ;  the  papers 
once  held  by  a  waste  basket,  now  empty,  had  been 
poured  into  the  open  fireplace  and  most  of  them 
burned.  The  chairs  had  been  covered  with  news 
papers  by  some  one  without  a  sense  of  values  suffi 
cient  to  suggest  covering  also  rare  books,  their  pages 
exposed  now  to  insects  and  some  of  their  splendid 
bindings  to  mildew  and  dry  rot.  The  study  had  the 
air  of  having  been  cleaned  and  straightened. 

Peter  tried  the  drawers  of  the  desk.     Some  of 


The  Vanishing  Men          217 

them  had  swollen  with  the  damp,  but  none  were 
locked;  they  were  filled  with  catalogues,  pamphlets 
and  with  clippings  in  envelopes  arranged  in  alpha 
betical  order.  A  deep  drawer  at  the  bottom  con 
tained  several  account  books,  many  packages  of 
canceled  bank  checks  bound  with  elastic  bands  now 
dried  and  crumbling  under  the  touch.  On  the  whole 
Peter,  who  had  Brena's  permission  to  examine  any 
thing  he  found,  saw  at  first  no  interest  in  these  pri 
vate  papers,  unless  when  time  elapsed  so  that 
Parmalee  after  another  three  years  could  be  declared 
legally  dead,  an  executor  might  find  value  in  them 
as  a  record  of  the  financial  affairs  of  the  vanished 
man.  No  doubt  his  lawyer  had  seen  many  of  them 
already. 

For  the  correspondence,  however,  Peter  had  a 
greater  interest.  He  drew  it  toward  him,  untied  the 
string,  and  having  stopped  to  survey  the  room  again 
from  the  chair  that  once  had  known  for  so  many 
restless  hours  of  panic  and  suffering,  the  warmth 
of  Parmalee's  living  body,  began  to  go  hastily  over 
the  letters  there. 

They  were  not  illuminating.    If  they  represented 


218          The  Vanishing  Men 

the  mail  that  Parmalee  received  they  suggested  only 
the  life  of  a  man  who  has  separated  himself  from 
his  friends  or  who  had  not  acquired  friends.  One 
or  two  from  France  and  England  expressed  grace 
ful  or  formal  messages  of  those  who  had  known 
this  strange  American  as  a  liberal  host  and  a  skill 
ful  and  diplomatic  impresario  for  his  beautiful 
young  wife  who  had  made  something  of  a  small 
clatter  in  interesting  social  corners  in  Europe  and 
then  had  gone.  Otherwise  this  mail  was  the  mis 
cellany  received  by  a  man  whose  personality  had 
no  power  to  be  loved  or  remembered,  who  was  on 
the  mailing  lists  of  book  dealers  and  others  desirous 
of  reaching  a  man  of  means  by  personal  letters  ad 
dressed  to  his  weaknesses  or  his  vanities.  Occasion 
ally  Parmalee  had  drawn  from  some  university  pro 
fessor  a  reply  to  inquiries  made  in  the  interest  of  the 
book  he  had  been  writing.  There  were  a  few  let 
ters  from  stock  brokers  as  to  investment  changes, 
and  a  few  bills. 

One  of  these  bills  was  the  only  piece  of  matter 
that  gave  Peter  the  slightest  interest.  It  was  from 
the  famous  old  John  Henry  Wycoff  of  Baltimore  of 


The  Vanishing  Men          219 

whose  death  Peter  had  read  by  chance,  a  man  re 
membered  only  among  those  who  are  book  collectors, 
a  dealer  whose  black  coat  was  always  covered  with 
dandruff  and  who  left  a  third  of  a  million  dollars. 
This  bill  was  for  two  thousand  eight  hundred  of 
these  dollars — an  account  that  had  probably  been 
settled  by  Parmalee's  attorney,  Lanfrew.  It  was 
something  of  a  bill  for  one  book — a  book  described 
as  Kolb's  privately  reprinted  version  of  the  Jesuit 
MSS.  entitled  "Explorations  of  Father  Carlos  in 
Mescalero  Desert,"  shipped  via  registered  post  on 
1 8th  inst.  Below  this  statement  of  account  were 
the  words,  "Please  see  letter."  There  were  two  pin 
holes  at  the  corner  of  the  paper  as  if  Wycoff  had 
attached  his  letter  to  the  bill. 

Peter  thought  it  would  be  interesting  to  see  a 
book,  so  obscure,  that  was  worth  nearly  three  thou 
sand  dollars.  He  even  wondered  what  plausible  ex 
planation  the  old  dealer  had  given.  His  letter,  how 
ever,  was  now  missing. 

Peter  was  about  to  put  the  matter  out  of  his  mind 
when  he  saw  the  date  of  the  bill.  He  held  up  the 
fingers  of  one  hand  and  counted  upon  them  with  the 


220         The  Vanishing  Men 

forefinger  of  the  other.  Then  suddenly  he  got  up 
from  the  chair  and  began  a  rapid  search  of  the  top 
of  the  desk.  He  did  not  find  the  letter  there. 

He  turned  to  the  waste  basket ;  it  was  empty.  He 
had  forgotten  that  its  contents  had  been  dumped 
into  the  fireplace  and  when  he  remembered,  it  was 
with  chagrin  that  he  saw  the  ashes  matted  down 
by  the  rains  that  had  come  down  the  flue  and  only 
a  few  unburned  scraps  here  and  there  powdered  over 
with  fallen  soot.  Kneeling  down  on  the  hearth  he 
pulled  out  a  great  number  of  these  bits  of  torn 
paper  that  had  fallen  out  of  reach  of  the  flames. 

Peter  was  rewarded  for  his  search  by  two  bits 
of  paper  no  larger  than  calling  cards  upon  which, 
much  faded,  was  the  same  old-fashioned,  irregular 
typing  that  had  appeared  in  the  bill.  On  one  of 
them  was  the  "Yours  most  truthfully"  of  John 
Henry  Wycoff;  on  the  other  torn  scrap  the  words 
"reluctant  to  present  but  you"  and  below  "Only  this 
justifies"  and  "the  owner  though  aware  of  your 
possession  of  the  imperfect  copy,  accordingly  he" 
and  "not  in  your  confidence." 

Peter  spoke  aloud;  he  said:  "Parmalee  wanted 


The  Vanishing  Men          221 

that  book  badly."  He  looked  again  at  the  date  of 
the  bill.  "I  wonder  if  this  was  the  zeal  of  a  col 
lector  who  has  a  passion  for  perfect  copies." 

The  words  defined  a  thought  for  Peter.  It  would 
be  interesting  to  see  whether  "The  Explorations  of 
Father  Carlos  in  Mescalero  Desert"  had  disappeared 
with  Parmalee  when  he  had  answered  his  strange 
impulse  to  go  to  some  unnamed  destination.  Peter 
turned  toward  the  library  shelves  and  then  with  the 
thought  that  a  search  among  these  volumes  would 
be  saved  if  he  found  a  catalogue  he  went  again  to 
the  desk.  The  copy  of  the  book  was  there — under 
two  or  three  other  books, — a  handsomely  bound 
volume  of  large  pages  whose  thick  paper  rather  than 
the  length  of  text  gave  it  bulk. 

The  book  had  been  printed  in  English  in  1830 
from  copies  of  manuscripts  of  Jesuits  that  with 
other  records  had  been  lost  in  the  destruction  of  the 
mission  church  in  Los  Banos  in  1812.  The  work 
was  a  beautiful  piece  of  bookmaking  in  perfect 
preservation  and  Peter,  though  interested  in  quaint 
descriptions  of  this  old  missionary  who  had  braved 
the  terrors  of  thirst  and  heat  to  penetrate  the  coun- 


222         The  Vanishing  Men 

try  along  the  eastern  border  of  New  Mexico,  was 
admiring  also  the  rare  skill  and  beauty  of  the  pages 
when  he  suddenly  came  upon  a  hiatus  in  its  con 
tinuity.  Page  thirty-two  began  a  description  of  the 
Lost  Pueblo,  where  according  to  legend  a  city  whose 
age  was  of  centuries  had  been  ended  as  a  punish 
ment  for  failing  to  worship  the  god  of  water.  A 
scourge  of  thirst  had  been  visited  upon  the  degener 
ate  Indian  dwellers  who  had  been  so  long  protected 
by  the  terrors  that  the  waterless  desert  must  have 
had  for  more  warlike  tribes  who  would  otherwise 
have  attacked  them.  The  well  around  which  the 
pueblo  had  been  built — the  very  life  of  the  people — 
had  been  dried  up  in  one  night  by  a  miracle. 

"Many  and  curious  are  the  carvings  upon  the 
walls  of  this  Lost  Pueblo.  To  copy  them  and  their 
heathenish  devices  I  was  sorely  tempted  and  would 
have  done  so  had  time  been  given  me,"  said  Father 
Carlos.  "Especially  I  noted  a  figure  of  great  size 
upon  the  wall  that  faces  the  setting  sun,  for  this 
was  a  serpent  with  feathers  like  a  bird,  a  figure  such 
as  is  seen  never  but  in  the  lands  to  the  south  and 
beyond  the  Great  River.  While  waiting  for  day  I 


The  Vanishing  Men          223 

drew  the  lines  of  the  journey  we  had  made  which 
I  here  set  down  again  for  the  guidance  of  others. 
On  the  coming  of  morn  we  went  toward  the  purpk 
vapors  of  the " 

Peter  had  turned  to  the  next  page.  It  began: 
"These  accounts  of  treasure  are  but  the  poor  spear 
lations  of  the  ignorant.  Long  after  the  sandstorms 
have  covered  the  pretentious  dwelling  places  of  matt 
such  perversity  will  endure  that  worldly  avarice  will 
conjure  into  belief  the  tradition  of  fools."  This 
was  not  page  thirty-three  but  page  thirty-seven.  The 
pages  between  were  gone. 

For  a  moment  DeWolfe  was  puzzled.  This  was 
not  a  perfect  copy.  After  a  moment's  reflection  he 
felt  the  humiliation  of  stupidity.  Of  course  the 
copy  he  was  examining  was  the  imperfect  volume 
that  Parmalee  had  owned  originally:  the  one  sent 
by  Wycoff  probably  would  be  found  in  its  place  on 
the  shelves  where  Brena's  husband  had  put  it — one 
of  the  last  acts  he  ever  did  in  that  house.  Peter, 
arising,  walked  along  the  rows  of  books  looking  at 
the  titles;  in  less  than  three  minutes  he  had  found 


224          The  Vanishing  Men 

the  other  copy  of  the  quaint  old  book  and  taken  it 
down. 

He  blew  the  dust  off  the  once  gilded  top  of  its 
pages  and  as  he  did  so  he  noticed  that  at  one  place 
the  pages  did  not  quite  press  close  together.  The 
volume  fell  open  there — at  page  thirty-seven.  The 
two  preceding  leaves  of  the  book  had  been  torn  out! 

He  went  back  to  the  desk  chair,  sat  down,  thrust 
his  feet  out  straight  before  him  and  whistled. 

After  a  few  moments  he  opened  the  first  copy  of 
"Father  Carlos"  again  and  read  over  the  paragraphs 
on  page  thirty-two.  He  scowled,  put  the  book  down 
again,  and,  getting  up,  paced  around  the  desk  just 
as  Parmalee,  as  a  caged  animal,  had  paced  around  it 
in  squares  during  his  restless,  sleepless  nights  of 
fear. 

"Serpent  with  feathers  like  a  bird,"  he  said  as 
one  who  desires  to  hear  the  words  so  that  their 
meaning  shall  be  more  clear.  He  was  thinking  of 
the  scrap  of  paper  in  his  pocket — that  scrap  of  paper 
that  Jim  Hennepin  had  left  inadvertently  with 
Brena  when  she  saw  him  for  the  last  time,  that  scrap 
of  paper  with  the  crudely  drawn  figure  of  the 


The  Vanishing  Men          225 

feathered  serpent — the  god,  Kuk-ul-can — and  the 
two  scrawled  words,  "This  Sign." 

He  took  out  this  scrap  and  walking  to  a  window, 
with  its  barred  grating  through  which  the  gray  east 
wind  was  hurling  more  rain  against  the  spattered 
panes,  he  examined  the  handwriting.  With  the  man 
ner  of  a  guilty  man  engaged  in  some  nefarious  and 
shameful  performance,  he  drew  forth  Brena's  let 
ter  of  introduction  addressed  to  Lanfrew,  the  at 
torney,  opened  it,  and  holding  the  two  pieces  of 
writing  side  by  side  glanced  from  one  to  the  other. 
The  capital  S  in  the  word  "Sign"  was  not  like  hers. 
And  yet 

He  paced  again,  thinking;  then  uttering^ an  ex 
clamation,  he  pulled  open  the  lower  drawer  of  the 
desk  and  took  out  a  handful  of  Parmalee's  canceled 
checks.  Shifting  one  behind  the  other,  he  went  on 
hurriedly  glancing  at  the  dates  until  he  had  found 
one  for  eighty  dollars  made  payable  to  "Brena 
Selcoss  Parmalee." 

Almost  viciously  he  slapped  this  one  over  onto  its 
face  and  stared  down  at  the  endorsement  on  the  back. 
"Pay  to  Bearer,  Brena  Selcoss  Parmalee." 


226          The  Vanishing  Men 

"That  will  do,"  he  said,  and  thrust  it  in  his 
pocket. 

He  returned  to  the  lower  drawer  again,  threw  out 
upon  the  desk  top  the  many  little  books  that  his 
casual  observation  had  determined  were  Compton 
Parmalee's  private  books  of  account. 

"Let's  see — seven  years,"  said  Peter.  "This  one 
may  do.  Nineteen  twelve.  And  this  one.  Nineteen 
eleven." 

Opening  the  first,  he  began  a  search  of  its  entries. 
For  more  than  three  hours  he  went  over  the  items 
in  the  rough  accounting  system  of  Parmalee. 

At  the  end  of  his  amateur  audit  he  thrust  the 
books  under  his  arm,  looked  at  his  watch,  left  the 
library,  took  his  wet  hat  and  overcoat,  and  before 
he  went  out  of  the  house,  he  stopped  for  a  moment 
to  listen  to  the  hush  within  its  four  evil  walls  and 
to  the  whine  of  the  wind  outside.  The  Chinese 
mirror  again  reflected  his  own  countenance  and  the 
countenance  of  the  man  who  walked  out  from  the 
stifling,  musty,  dead  air  into  the  cold,  salt-scented 
wind  was  the  countenance  of  a  troubled  man. 

There  was  time  to  see  Lanfrew  if  he  could  catch 


The  Vanishing  Men          227 

a  train  for  New  York  without  too  much  delay,  and 
if  good  fortune  would  hold  the  lawyer  in  his  office. 
Peter  wanted  to  get  from  the  last  man  who  talked 
with  Parmalee  one  fact  that  had  perplexed  him.  So 
much  did  he  want  to  put  an  end  to  doubts  which 
had  grown  that  when  he  had  reached  the  city  and 
gone  downtown  on  a  subway  express  and  had  stood 
at  the  mahogany  rail  in  the  office  until  he  had  heard 
that  Lanf  rew  was  there,  he  walked  through  and  over 
the  protests  of  a  young  law  clerk,  directly  into  the 
room  of  the  head  of  the  firm. 

DeWolfe,  with  his  own  characteristic  vividness 
of  expression,  had  once  said,  "There  are  three  kinds 
of  lawyers — silky  pomeranians,  lean  foxes  and  bull 
dogs."  Lanfrew  was  distinctly  a  bull  dog. 

He  was  short  with  a  head  too  large  for  his  body 
and  his  shoulders  stooped  as  if  the  weight  of  that 
head  had  been  too  great.  The  hair  that  tumbled 
around  on  his  head,  wherever  it  was  left  by  the 
thrust,  the  pluckings,  the  twistings  and  the  ruffling 
of  his  nervous,  knotty  fingers,  was  still  almost  free 
from  streaks  of  gray,  although  the  lines  in  his  face 
were  deep  and  spoke  of  his  age.  His  lower  jaw  was 


228          The  Vanishing  Men 

eternally  thrust  forward  and  was  eternally  in  mo 
tion  as  if  the  man  was  muttering  to  himself  endless 
imprecations  upon  life,  existence,  fellow  men  and 
the  vanities  of  the  world.  His  face  was  that  kind 
of  face  which  a  great  tragedian  would  have  found 
a  comfort  and  an  asset,  but  like  a  bull  dog's  it  ap 
peared  ready  to  open  its  square  iron  jaws  and  fasten 
them  into  some  one's  throat. 

Lanfrew  spoke  no  sentence  that  he  did  not  begin 
with  a  low  growl;  he  gave  the  impression  to  his 
clients,  perhaps  by  intention,  that  he  was  the  per 
sonification  of  wrath  and  of  reckonings,  and  the 
fierce  instrument  of  a  terrible  and  brutal  justice. 
This  was  worth  many  thousands  a  year  to  him. 

When  he  had  read  Brena's  letter,  he  tossed  it  on 
the  desk  and,  glowering  at  Peter,  he  said,  "Well?" 

"I  came  to  ask "  DeWolfe  began. 

"Yes?"  the  other  interrupted  with  a  growl. 

Peter  pointed  at  the  letter. 

"I  know,"  snarled  Lanfrew.  "I'm  at  your  serv 
ice." 

"You  were  the  last  man  who  ever  saw  Compton 
Parmalee,"  Peter  began. 


The  Vanishing  Men          229 

"He  came  to  draw  an  instrument  in  my  office/' 

"A  will?" 

"Yes." 

"Which  leaves  to  his  widow ?" 

"The  man  isn't  legally  dead  yet,"  Lanfrew  said 
severely. 

"He  has  been — say  gone — for  several  years." 

"Apparently  wiped  out.  Yes.  And  there  is 
nothing  more  to  be  done.  We  did  all  humanly  pos 
sible.  We  exhausted  every  means  except  that  of  a 
nasty  publicity.  It's  futile.  The  wise  know  when 
there  are  limitations.  I  know.  It  is  folly  for  you 
to  waste  your  time.  Where  did  you  meet  Mrs. 
Parmalee — old  friend?" 

"I  met  her  in  London." 

The  old  lawyer  arose,  thrust  his  jaw  out  as  if 
making  it  flexible  and  ready  to  bite,  and  stared  for 
a  long  time  at  Peter. 

"Are  you  the  son  of  DeWolfe  of  the  Equity?" 

"Yes." 

"Let  it  alone." 

"What  alone?" 

"This  affair.     Let  sleeping   dogs   lie.      You   are 


230          The  Vanishing  Men 

a  young  man  of — well — I  know  who  you  are. 
Used  to  know  your  father.  I  can  talk  to  you  con 
fidentially.  I'll  say  this — Parmalee  was  a  client 
sent  up  to  me  by  our  Texas  correspondents,  and  as 
far  as  I  am  concerned  I  wouldn't  care  a  snitchet  if 
I  had  never  seen  him." 

Peter  nodded. 

"You  saw  the  last  of  him." 

Lanfrew  looked  out  the  window  at  the  harbor 
that  appeared  to  stretch  out  like  a  woolly  gray 
blanket  from  the  bases  of  monument  buildings;  he 
wheeled  suddenly  upon  De  Wolfe. 

"He  came  here  that  day — the  last.  He  had  tickets 
for  some  place  and  spoke  of  taking  his  wife,  but  he 
was  excited.  He  spoke  of  an  alternative.  He  drank. 
You  know  that?" 

"Was  he ?" 

"No;  he  was  nervous,  excited." 

"As  if  afraid?" 

"No." 

Peter  thought  a  moment  before  he  said,  "Would 
you  say  he  was  thinking  of  suicide?" 

"No,  I  wouldn't,"   replied  Lanfrew  batting  the 


The  Vanishing  Men          231 

tassel  of  the  window  curtain  with  his  stubby  fingers. 
"He  had  something  else  on  his  mind.  He  spoke 
vaguely.  I  didn't  give  a  damn  what  he  had  on  his 
mind.  It  was  something.  He  spoke  as  if  it  were 
some  errand — like  a  man  who  had  received  a  mes 
sage." 

"What  kind  of  a  message?" 

"I  don't  know.  I  got  the  impression — mind  you 
now  and  mark  me  well,  I  don't  say  it  was  so — I  got 
the  impression  that  he  was  engaged  in  some — what 
shall  I  say? — investigation." 

"Investigation?"  repeated  DeWolfe  in  a  startled 
voice. 

Lanfrew  nodded  his  bull  dog  head  up  and  down 
as  if  there  were  oiled  bearings  in  his  invisible  short 
neck. 

"He  left  no  word  for  his  wife?"  Peter  asked, 
shooting  the  question  when  Lanfrew's  eyes  had  met 
his. 

He  saw  the  lawyer  flinch. 

"I  asked  whether  he  left  any  message  for  his 
wife?" 

The  other  man  coughed,  felt  under  his  heavy  chin 


232          The  Vanishing  Men 

for  his  concealed  throat  and  sat  down  in  his  desk 
chair. 

"To  be  frank  with  you,  he  did,"  he  said.  "This 
of  course  is  confidential.  It  was  too  brutal  to  give 
her." 

Peter  leaned  forward.     He  said,  "Too  brutal?" 

Lanfrew  said,  "Yes.  He  said  to  me,  'If  I  make 
up  my  mind  not  to  take  her  away — if  I  go  on  a  little 
journey  myself,  you  tell  her  that  I'll  be  back  in  two 
weeks.  You  tell  her  I'm  going  to  cut  a  knot — that 
I'm  going  to  relieve  the  hell  I've  been  living.'  " 

The  two  men  sat  silently  looking  at  each  other. 

"Of  course  I  thought  he'd  telegraph  her,"  said 
Lanfrew  argumentatively.  "I  didn't  take  his  mes 
sage  seriously.  It  wouldn't  have  done  her  any  good 
to  tell  her  that  brutal  message,  eh?  And  later? 
Well,  I  put  the  thing  off.  It  cleared  no  mystery.  It 
was  inconsequential." 

Peter  asked,  "Then  you  thought  he  blamed  her?" 

Lanfrew  threw  up  his  hands,  a  gesture  which  said, 
"There  is  no  question." 

"For  what?"  asked  Peter. 


The  Vanishing  Men          233 

Lanfrew  chewed  upon  an  imaginary  mouthful; 
he  said  finally:  "God  knows.  Some  women — • 
beautiful  women — are  poisonous.  Rare  cases.  They 
carry  a  deadly  poison,  DeWolfe.  Some  influence, 
some  bane,  some  corrosive  withering,  devilish,  fatal 
fluid  or  vapor  or  aura — whatever  you  choose.  Who 
knows  what  it  is?  But  she — that  woman — when  you 
find  her,  will  blast  a  man  like " 

He  stopped. 

Peter  drew  a  deep  breath.  He  said  almost  in 
credulously,  "Did  you  tell  me  that  you  got  the  im 
pression  from  Mr.  Parmalee  that  he  was  going  to 
investigate  something?" 

"Yes.  Been  invited  to  investigate  something," 
the  lawyer  said. 

DeWolfe  stared  at  the  carpet.  After  a  pause  he 
got  up  and  held  out  his  hand. 

"Let  this  alone,"  said  Lanfrew.  "But  of  course 
if  you  want  anything  else,  come  in  again." 

Peter  went  home  to  his  apartment. 

He  found  there  an  envelope  brought  by  a  mes 
senger  from  the  office  of  Pennington,  Gould  and 


234          The  Vanishing  Men 

Goodhue.  It  contained  a  cable  from  Brena,  overseas. 
"Do  not  go  any  deeper,  I  beg  you.    I  am  in  mortal 
fear,"  it  said.    "I  am  coming  to  America.    All  my 
love." 


XV 

BY  afternoon  on  Friday  Peter  had  acquired  cer 
tain  information  that  he  had  sought. 

His  father  had  often  been  criticized  by  smaller  or 
less  successful  men  on  the  ground  that  he  had 
little  ability  of  his  own,  that  he  made  his  way  up 
on  the  labors  and  the  resourcefulness  of  his  em 
ployees,  his  advisers,  his  lieutenants.  Peter  had 
heard  this  criticism  from  men  who  believed  that  the 
younger  DeWolfe,  with  his  nonchalant  disregard 
for  all  the  conventional  forms  of  success,  with  his 
independence  and  originality,  had  much  more  native 
ability  than  his  father:  but  Peter  had  always  an 
swered  that  no  man  was  a  good  general  unless  he 
could  mobilize  and  utilize  the  efforts  of  other  men. 
A  man  who  could  choose  the  best  cabinet  would 
have  nine-tenths  of  the  requirements  necessary  for 
a  great  President,  he  said.  And  he  often  recalled 
the  habit  of  mind  of  his  father  saying  to  himself 

235 


236          The  Vanishing  Men 

not  "What  would  he  have  done?"  but  "Who  would 
he  have  sent  for?"  Old  DeWolfe  had  left  with 
Peter  the  epigram,  "Always^get  the  best,  no  matter 
what  it  costs,  and,  above  all,  get  the  best  man." 

Now  that  he  had  need  of  three  experts  he  had 
conducted  a  careful  inquiry  as  to  the  most  infallible 
men  available  for  his  purposes.  He  was  able  to  pay 
them  for  the  work  he  proposed  that  they  should  do 
and  he  felt  a  satisfaction  when  the  three  had  been 
picked  out  upon  the  judgment  of  shrewd  men  for 
whose  opinion  he  had  spent  twenty-four  hours.  He 
laughed  a  little  over  the  idea  that  destiny  had  cast 
him  in  the  role  of  a  sleuth  and  that  he  was  doing  his 
utmost  to  act  more  like  a  hard-headed  director  of  a 
business  to  be  done,  than  he  had  ever  acted  in  his 
life  before;  it  was  not  much  like  being  the  romantic 
detective,  after  all. 

In  addition  to  acquiring  the  information  that 
would  lead  him  to  three  men,  Peter  had  wrestled 
with  the  problem  presented  by  Brena's  cable.  He 
had  sent  her  word  when  he  had  arrived  safely  in 
New  York  that  he  was  full  of  hope  and  optimism. 
"We  shall  win,"  he  had  said,  "because  any  other 


The  Vanishing  Men          237 

thought  is  too  terrible  to  bear."  He  could  not  under 
stand  then  what  new  facts  she  had  to  justify  her 
strange  message  to  him  unless  it  were  an  anonymous 
warning  such  as  that  which  he  had  received  in  Liver 
pool.  To  accede  to  her  request  and  to  proceed  no 
further  along  the  lines  of  inquiry  which  he  had 
chosen  as  significant  would  mean  delay  and  perhaps 
a  loss  of  the  thin  threads  that  he  had  picked  up  to 
unravel. 

To  have  cabled  Brena  that  she  must  seek  the  aid 
of  the  office  of  the  British  Admiralty  in  procuring 
prompt  passage  across  the  water  would  have  served 
Peter's  inclination.  He  had  suffered  from  that 
extraordinary  pang  that  comes  with  parting  and 
with  the  groundless  and  yet  apparently  prophetic 
intuition  that  the  one  who  is  loved  the  most  will 
never  be  seen  again.  He  had  felt  the  pain  of  empti 
ness  without  her;  he  had  felt  the  hunger  for  the 
close  presence  of  her  spirit,  her  mind  and  the  touch 
of  her  tender  hand  from  which  there  flowed  so 
marvelous  a  current  of  strength  and  well  being.  It 
would  have  been  easy  for  DeWolfe  to  have  aban 
doned  temporarily  the  task  he  had  undertaken,  which 


238          The  Vanishing  Men 

he  might  do  in  all  good  conscience  and  with  the  com 
plete  absolution  from  any  obligation  that  her  cable 
had  given  him. 

The  truth  was,  however,  that  he  had  in  him  a 
great  deal  of  the  fiber  of  determination,  a  good  deal 
of  a  single-track  purpose  that  frowned  upon  him 
and  made  him  wince  when  he  became  tempted  to 
postpone  his  plans  and  indulge  his  desire  in  waiting 
idly  for  her  to  come.  He  knew  from  the  beginning 
that  this  was  the  side  of  self  that  would  win;  he 
was  only  doing  that  which  he  knew  in  his  inner  con 
sciousness  he  would  do  when  he  cabled  a  reply  to 
her  that  said,  "Do  not  come  yet.  I  will  cable  you 
again.  If  you  have  important  news  do  not  be  afraid 
to  send  it." 

He  was  glad  when  that  was  done.  There  was  an 
additional  reason  for  it;  he  was  not  yet  prepared 
to  meet  Brena  Selcoss  for  the  second  time.  He 
must  first  clear  the  way  for  relationship  that  had  in 
it  no  reservations. 

The  first  thing  to  be  done  was  to  confer  with  one 
Joseph  Smallwood  of  Drennan  and  Co.,  the  pub 
lishers. 


The  Vanishing  Men          239 

When  Peter  first  saw  Smallwood  he  felt  a  little 
like  one  who  has  been  sent  to  an  armless  dentist. 
The  man  was  pale  and  flavorless  like  the  cream 
sauce  of  cheap  restaurants.  He  sat  behind  a  desk 
in  a  corner  of  the  publisher's  office,  screened  off  from 
the  bustle  of  messengers,  proofreaders,  stenog 
raphers  with  an  absurd  fat  publisher's  list  bound  in 
green  open  before  him,  turning  its  pages  with  fingers 
that  had  the  blue  appearance  of  a  cold  storage 
chicken,  his  transparent  eyelids  drooped  as  if  his 
profession  were  that  of  overcoming  an  intense  de 
sire  for  sleep.  DeWolfe  had  difficulty  in  believing 
that  this  was  the  man  to  whom  he  had  been  referred. 

"Mr.  DeWolfe,  how  can  I  serve  you?"  he  said  in 
a  low  drawl  as  if  he  were  pulling  his  words  like 
molasses  candy  into  long  strips  to  match  his  own 
long  body. 

"I  understand  that  you  not  only  maintain  a  con 
nection  with  Drennan  but  undertake  commissions 
and  pass  upon  technical  questions  independently." 

Smallwood's  smile  was  of  the  kind  that  snaps  on 
and  off  like  an  electric  light.  Now  he  snapped  it  on ; 
it  was  gone  in  a  flash — a  string-pulled  smile. 


240          The  Vanishing  Men 

"Oh,  yes,"  he  said  wearily.  "Did  you  want  to 
find " 

"A  book,"  said  Peter. 

"What  book?" 

"  The  Explorations  of  Father  Carlos  in  the  Mes- 
calero  Desert.'  Here  is  the  whole  story."  Peter 
gave  him  a  card  with  the  details.  "I  want  to  buy  a 
perfect  copy." 

Smallwood  shook  his  head  from  left  to  right  and 
then  to  left  again  with  a  sad  expression  followed  by 
the  camera  shutter  smile. 

"It  will  take  a  long  time,"  he  said  tenderly  as  if 
he  bore  the  weight  of  all  human  suffering  upon  his 
heart.  "It  is  a  very  rare  book ;  Anderson,  the  sugar 
refiner,  owned  a  copy.  That  is  how  I  happened  to 
know.  I  appraised  his  library.  Perhaps  it  will 
take  a  year." 

"A  week,"  said  Peter.    "No  more." 

"A  week,"  repeated  Smallwood,  closing  his  eyes  as 
if  resigned  to  anything,  come  what  would. 

"I  thought  it  would  be  possible  to  telegraph  to 
every  dealer  in  the  country." 

"Please   don't   interrupt,"   the   other   said   in   a 


The  Vanishing  Men          241 

whisper  as  if  Peter  had  clattered  into  some  funeral 
service.  "I  am  thinking." 

When  he  had  ceased  thinking  he  looked  up, 
snapped  on  his  smile  and  stared  at  DeWolfe  out  of 
pale  blue  eyes. 

"The  operation  will  cost  a  great  deal  of  money." 

Peter  waved  his  hand. 

"The  book  is  a  rarity  but  not  one  that  the  dealers 
know  how  to  locate — as  for  instance,  a  first  edition 
of  Horace  Walpole,  where  the  location  of  every 
copy  is  known." 

Peter  nodded. 

"I  think  I  better  say "  began  Smallwood  who 

appeared  discouraged.  He  paused,  he  repeated:  "I 
think  I  better  say,  however,  that  I  will  make  a  trial 
provided " 

"That  I  am  able  to  bear  any  expense  ?" 

Smallwood  appeared  surprised  that  any  human 
being  could  have  as  much  sense.  He  said:  "The 
search  will  require  several  stenographers,  a  long 
distance  telephone  bill  of  rather  alarming  size  and 
possibly  a  price  for  the  book  far  beyond  its  real 


242          The  Vanishing  Men 

value — several  times  the  probable  amount  it  would 
bring  at  an  auction." 

"Go  ahead,"  said  Peter. 

"May  I  say  that  the — your  desire  for  a  copy  of 
this  book  must  be  extraordinary?" 

"Oh,  yes,  most  extraordinary.  A  week  ago  I 
would  not  have  paid  two  dollars  for  it.  Men  have 
gambled  away  their  lives  on  it.  I  can't  tell  how 
much  I  want  it  until  I  get  it.  But  to  get  it  I  will 
pay  what  it  costs." 

The  authority  on  obscure  and  rare  volumes  took 
off  his  glasses,  wiped  them  with  a  new  dollar  bill 
and  putting  them  on  again  stared  at  Peter.  He 
drawled : 

"I  am  not  sure  that  your  desire  is  a  folly.  It 
may  be  comparable  to  a  desire  for  a  personal  and 
unique  identity  that  makes  only  one  woman  in  the 
world  appear  worth  seeking.  And  I  suppose  that  is 
why  fine  tastes  differ  from  coarse  tastes;  the  latter 
are  not  only  coarse,  but  they  do  not  know  what  it 
means  to  insist  upon  the  one  thing  that  the  desire 
calls  for,  rejecting  every  compromise  and  every 
substitute." 


The  Vanishing  Men          243 

Peter  nodded.  "Thank  you — you  have  furnished 
me  with  an  idea.  And  if  you  can  locate  a  copy  of 
the  book ? 

"I  would  let  you  know  at  once." 

"Time  counts.    I  would  be  grateful." 

Smallwood  blinked.  Only  when  his  visitor  was  at 
the  door  did  he  say,  with  a  switched-on  smile :  "Oh, 
by  the  way.  must  the  volume  be  in  perfect  con 
dition?" 

"It  can  be  a  bundle  of  debris  as  far  as  I  am  con 
cerned,"  answered  Peter.  "But  all  the  pages  must 
be  there." 

The  other  man  was  reaching  for  the  telephone 
instrument  with  his  cold  storage  fingers  as  DeWolfe 
left  the  office. 

From  the  publishers  he  went  to  one  Manfred 
Eldegard  at  6  Nassau  Street.  Eldegard  is  a  public 
accountant  whose  clients  are  the  surety  and  bond 
ing  companies.  The  vice-president  of  one  of  these 
companies  had  said  to  DeWolfe:  "You  are  not 
familiar  with  auditing  and  accounting  as  I  am, 
Peter.  If  you  were  you  would  know  that  accuracy, 
honesty,  speed,  reliability  are  qualities  that  can  be 


244          The  Vanishing  Men 

hired  in  carload  lots.  It  is  easy  to  engage  experts 
in  figures.  But  the  genius  among  accountants  is  the 
man  who  can  read  figures  just  as  a  pianist  reads 
music.  That  man  is  worth  something  because  he 
can  translate  into  the  terms  of  life.  He  doesn't 
check  up  your  books.  He  plays  them  for  you. 
You  can  tell  how  they  sound.  He  can  bend  over 
the  figure  on  a  corporation's  account  and  smell  the 
truth  about  the  company.  If  he  wants  to  catch  a 
defaulter  he  can  tell  by  looking  at  the  red  edges  of 
a  journal's  pages  whether  one  has  been  there.  He 
is  not  a  mathematician;  he's  a  magician.  There's 
one  of  those  fellows  that  can  make  circles  round  the 
rest.  Here's  his  letter  head." 

"Is  he  willing  to  take  a  chance  on  getting  shot?" 
Peter  had  asked. 

"Shot?"  the  other  had  repeated  with  a  gasp. 

"I  may  have  to  send  him  a  long  way  off.  I  don't 
know  what  hazards  there  are." 

The  official  of  the  bonding  company  had  looked 
at  Peter  incredulously  but  he  had  said,  "You'll  have 
to  ask  him  or  his  wife.  I  understand  that  there  are 
few  witnesses  for  the  State  in  criminal  trials  who 


The  Vanishing  Men          245 

have  weathered  as  many  blackmail  and  black-hand 
threats  as  M.  E.  as  we  call  him." 

"Would  he  be  more  ready  to  keep  his  mouth  shut 
for  his  client  than  to  open  it  to  the  police  for  in 
stance  ?" 

"My  dear  sir,  when  you  engage  Eldegard  you 
buy  a  strip  of  his  services.  It's  yours.  If  you  don't 
want  him  to  disclose  anything  there  is  no  process 
server  that  can  land  him  and  if  there  were  there  is 
no  district  attorney  who  would  get  anything  out  of 
cross-examination  except  evasions." 

Upon  a  confirmation  of  this  opinion  Peter  had 
chosen  this  fat  man  with  two  chins,  a  pompadour 
of  bristles  above  a  broad  flat  face  with  little  eyes, 
nose  and  mouth  pricked  into  it  as  if  by  a  point  of  a 
pencil;  to  him  Peter,  following  the  appointment  he 
had  made,  stated  his  problem. 

"Where  are  these  accounts?"  asked  Eldegard. 

Peter  put  them  upon  the  glass  top  of  the  desk. 
The  little  beady  eyes  of  the  fat  man  fixed  a  stare 
upon  the  Russia  leather  covers;  he  extended  a  large 
meaty  hand  and  caressed  these  books  as  if  they  were 
a  delicacy  brought  to  him  to  cook  and  eat — a  pleas- 


246          The  Vanishing  Men 

ure  of  digestion — a  mere  morsel  for  a  gourmand. 

"May  I  look?"  he  asked. 

"Certainly,"  Peter  replied. 

Eldegard  pulled  up  his  sleeves,  pushed  back  his 
cuffs,  habits  that  were  relics  of  the  days  when  he 
was  a  bookkeeper  for  a  St.  Louis  brewery,  of  days 
when  he  did  not  dream  of  owning  a  summer  place 
on  Long  Island  and  blooded  Jersey  cattle  and  a 
limousine  for  his  Laura.  As  he  turned  the  pages 
marked  by  Peter  he  began  to  utter  chu-chu,  chu-chu 
between  his  teeth,  increasing  its  speed  as  if  getting 
up  steam  as  a  locomotive  puffs  faster  and  faster 
when  it  leaves  a  train  shed. 

"What's  this  Credit  Account  X.D.  ?"  he  inquired 
under  his  breath. 

"That's  the  one  that  occurs  most  often,"  said 
Peter. 

Eldegard  drummed  with  his  cushioned  fingertips 
on  the  glass. 

"It  looks  that  way,"  he  announced,  " — the  way 
you  said." 

"But  you  are  not  sure?" 

"Only  sure  as  a  man  is  sure  who  finds  watercress 


The  Vanishing  Men          247 

in  his  milk.  To  be  sure  we  would  have  to  check 
against  the  transactions  in  the  local  Cotton  Ex 
change.  Some  of  these  are  New  Orleans  houses. 
This  X.D.  was  a  private  individual." 

DeWolfe  looked  at  the  expert  searchingly.  He 
said:  "Do  you  see  anything  else?" 

"Yes — some  one  has  been  here  before  us.  Per 
haps  it  was  you,  eh?" 

"No,"  replied  Peter.    "What  do  you  see?" 

"I  see  that  some  one  who  had  a  reason  has  put 
copy  paper  and  carbons  under  these  pages  and  copied 
these  handwriting  entries  by  running  a  stylus  over 
the  original  entries.  Sometimes  the  carbon  and 
paper  went  askew;  that's  why  you  see  these  little 
blue  marks.  Did  you  think  it  extraordinary  that  I 
observed  that?" 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Peter.  "Not  at  all.  How  could  I? 
It  was  the  first  thing  that  made  me  wonder  about 
the  story  these  figures  can  tell.  When  can  you  go  ?" 

"Go?    Me?    In  person?" 

"Yes.    New  Orleans — wherever  the  trail  leads?" 

Eldegard  shook  his  head  like  a  great  Buddha  with 
a  pivoted  neck.  "Never,"  he  said.  "I'm  too  busy." 


248          The  Vanishing  Men 

"Isn't  it  your  office  force  that  is  busy?"  asked 
DeWolfe,  throwing  his  cigarette  into  the  bronze  ash 
tray.  "Besides  as  for  the  money — that  is  for  you 
to  say.  Whatever  is  necessary  to  get  your  services." 

"It  isn't  money,"  Eldegard  answered.  "If  I'd 
paid  any  attention  to  money  I  wouldn't  be  worth 
fifty  thousand  to-day.  No,  it's  Laura — Mrs.  Elde 
gard.  We've  got  a  screened-in  porch ;  we  play  check;-, 
ers  every  evening." 

"And  so  on,"  said  Peter  describing  with  a  phrase 
the  whole  texture  of  a  great  fabric  of  companion 
ship  each  thread  of  which  was  a  homely  common 
place,  the  whole  a  magic  cloth  of  gold. 

"Yes,"  said  the  other.  "And  so  on.  How  did 
you  know?  You  never  lived  it?" 

"I  intend  to,"  said  Peter  solemnly. 

Eldegard  burst  into  uproarious  laughter.  "Say !" 
he  exclaimed  with  a  manner  of  speech  that  like  all 
other  natural  expressions  of  this  fat  man  had  been 
a  rock  of  Gibraltar  against  which  the  assaults  of 
culture  had  bounded  off.  "Say!  I'd  like  to  tackle 
this." 


The  Vanishing  Men          249 

He  slapped  the  back  of  one  of  the  Russian  leather 
books  as  one  would  slap  a  friend  on  the  back. 

"It's  a  story !"  he  said.     "A  fascinating  trail." 

"I  think  it  is  a  story — a  true  story,"  DeWolfe 
agreed.  "A  thriller." 

Eldegard  considered. 

"Blessed  if  I  don't  ask  Ma — ask  her  if  I  can  go." 

He  spoke  as  if  it  were  a  permission  to  go  to  the 
swimming  hole  or  the  circus. 

"Thank  you,"  said  Peter.  "I  recognize  the  pres 
ence  of  good  sportsmanship.  I  never  expected  to  see 
it  in  the  field  of  auditing." 

"Huh !"  Eldegard  ejaculated.  "I  like  a  little  fun ; 
that's  the  trouble  with  us  downtown  New  Yorkers; 
we  don't  have  enough  fun.  I'd  have  gone  to  war  if 
the  Army  would  let  me.  I  was  too  old  and  too  fat. 
I  lied  about  my  age  but  when  I  told  'em  I  was  thin 
they  wouldn't  believe  it." 

He  picked  up  the  two  books.  He  said:  "Leave 
'em  with  me,  and  telephone  me  to-morrow,  and  I'll 
let  you  know  what  Ma  says." 

"I'll  telephone  to-morrow,"  said  Peter. 


XVI 

ON  Sunday  evening,  after  he  had  dined  early  with 
Colby  Pennington,  in  one  of  the  great  deserted  (fin 
ing-rooms  of  a  certain  New  York  club,  Peter  felt 
the  sense  of  revolt  against  the  rut-running  life  of 
his  own  kind.  The  groove  that  fortune  had  pro 
vided  for  him  was  smooth  but  it  was  deep.  Its  cus 
toms,  like  the  rules  of  some  labor  unions,  were  de 
signed,  purposed  and  intended  to  reduce  individual 
expressions  to  a  common  level.  It  was  type  life. 

Peter  could  remember  his  first  sense  of  its  pain. 
The  initial,  deep,  agonizing  twinge  had  come  when 
he  was  thirteen.  From  the  time  he  was  ten  and 
until  he  was  fourteen  he  had  owned  a  cat-boat.  He 
had  been  the  skipper  of  that  cat ;  the  mate  was  Mike. 
Mike's  real  name  was  August.  He  was  eighteen  and 
the  freckles  on  his  face  were  frequent  and  deep  of 
color.  He  had  a  hare-lip,  a  good  heart,  and  Peter 
.  had  loved  him  and  hid  that  love.  But  Mike  and  the 
cat-boat  with  its  cruising  quarters  for  two  were  the 

250 


The  Vanishing  Men          251 

real  reasons  why  Peter  was  always  so  anxious  to 
have  the  family  go  to  their  waterfront  estate  on  the 
Long  Island  shore.  On  the  morning  of  his  four 
teenth  birthday  his  father,  clad  in  nightclothes,  had 
awakened  him  and  dragged  him  to  a  second-story 
balcony  of  their  villa.  He  had  rubbed  his  eyes  to 
see  more  clearly  a  steam  yacht,  slim,  white,  beautiful, 
varnished,  gleaming  \vith  polished  brass,  manned  by 
a  crew  of  several  men  in  uniform;  it  had  come  up 
to  the  private  moorings  during  the  night. 

"Yours,"  his  father  had  said.  "A  birthday." 
And  then  and  there  came  the  realization  that  the 
days  of  the  cat-boat  had  gone,  that  Mike  would 
never  be  the  same  again,  that  boyhood  freedom  had 
gone,  that  great  toys  that  he  did  not  want  in  his 
heart  of  hearts  were  now  to  be  his,  that  the  obliga 
tion  of  riches  had  put  its  giant  hand  upon  him  bend 
ing  his  free  spirit  into  formal  postures  and  like  a 
vampire  putting  its  loathsome  lips  upon  him  to 
draw  away  the  untrammeled  expression  of  himself. 
From  Pennington,  with  his  naturally  brilliant 
mind,  shackled  in  religion,  in  politics,  in  morals,  in 
taste,  by  those  schools  of  petty  imitation  misnamed 


252          The  Vanishing  Men 

Society  and  Respectability  and  Precedent,  DeWolfe 
that  evening  had  drawn  a  new  draught  of  disgust. 
Poor  Pennington,  industrious,  irreproachable,  suc 
cessful  !  For  all  his  pains  no  nearer  God :  for  all  his 
labors  no  nearer  to  mankind.  Even  his  restraints 
had  not  enlarged  his  soul;  Peter  was  certain  that  if 
the  lawyer  would  only  commit  one  good  dashing 
highway  robbery  he  would  be  a  better  man. 

He  wondered  what  this  successful  professional 
man  would  say  if  he  knew  that  under  Peter's  thigh 
a  hard  object  was  pressing  into  the  flesh  as  they  sat 
in  the  great  hall  with  their  coffee  and  watched  club 
members  slide  here  and  there  alone,  like  dyspeptic 
ghosts;  he  wondered  what  Pennington  would  do  if 
he  pulled  out  this  automatic  pistol  as  he  was  tempted 
to  do,  and  stirred  his  coffee  with  its  barrel.  The 
reason  that  Peter  did  not  do  this  was  because  when 
Pennington  had  said,  "You  are  a  fool  to  carry  that 
thing,"  he  could  be  sure  that  his  attorney  was  wrong 
about  it. 

When  he  said  good  night  to  Pennington,  there 
was  still  enough  daylight  for  a  walk  alone  to  one 
of  the  little  parks  over  near  the  East  River.  He 


The  Vanishing  Men          253 

remembered  that,  in  France,  his  idea  of  the  most 
wonderful  moment  in  the  world,  the  sharpest  con 
trast  to  the  gigantic  nobilities  and  the  colossal 
triviality  of  War,  was  a  moment  on  a  New  York 
park  bench  with  children  of  the  tenements  still  play 
ing  in  the  dusk,  perhaps  with  an  organ  and  a  monkey 
thrown  in  for  good  measure.  Since  then  how  life 
had  changed  for  him.  When  he  sat  down  the  chil 
dren  in  the  dusk — the  realities — faded  away  and  were 
lost  in  unreal  pictures  of  Brena  in  her  Beconshire 
garden,  perhaps  with  her  great  dark  eyes  turned  to" 
ward  the  sunset  because  he  had  gone  behind  it. 

He  felt  an  extraordinary  restlessness — like 
that  which  comes  upon  those  who  have  been 
deprived  of  some  drug  and  are  in  torture  while  it 
goes  slowly  out  of  the  system.  He  who  wished  not 
to  wait,  was  waiting.  He  felt  the  dread  of  un 
known  calamities.  And  with  this  haunting  sense 
of  hovering  crisis,  he  turned  back  to  his  apartment. 

There  Peter  tried  to  read,  experiencing  that  ir 
ritating  lack  of  concentration  which  comes  to  all 
readers  whose  minds  steal  away  from  the  page  al 
lowing  the  eyes  to  travel  on  alone  like  independent 


254         The  Vanishing  Men 

animals  photographing  mere  type  without  ideas, 
until  whisked  back  by  their  master  to  the  place  where 
they  had  ceased  to  read  and  begun  only  to  move 
across  the  lines  of  print.  He  put  the  book  down. 
The  romance  did  not  hold  him;  he  had  come  to  the 
threshold  of  romantic  realities.  He  had  knocked 
upon  a  non-committal  door.  He  was  waiting  for 
it  to  open. 

It  did  in  fact  open — and  quickly.  Before  nine, 
the  old  elevator  man  came  rocking  along  the  corridor 
on  his  long  and  his  short  leg  and  rang  Peter's  bell. 

"There's  a  gentleman  below,  sir,"  he  said.  "I 
knew  you  was  here,  sir,  but  I  told  him  I  would 
see." 

"What  was  his  name?"  asked  DeWolfe. 

"Smallwood,  sir,  Smallwood.  A  very  sleepish 
man — a  restful  man,  like." 

"You  never  can  tell  by  the  first  look,"  said  Peter. 
"Sunday  night !  And  Smallwood — bring  him  up." 

The  second  meeting  with  the  pale  personality  of 
the  authority  on  books  made  him  appear  to  Peter  a 
few  shades  lighter  in  pallor.  His  eyes  were  almost 
mere  colorless  openings  in  a  face  of  little  more  the 


The  Vanishing  Men          255 

color  of  a  moonstone  by  contrast  with  the  shell  rims 
of  his  glasses.  His  free  hand  hung  listless  as  if  it 
were  just  out  of  refrigeration.  He  wore  a,  suit  of 
pale  gray  the  pattern  of  which  was  so  delicate  that 
it  might  have  been  only  the  fancy  of  weak  eyes. 
Small  wood  looked  as  if  he  were  something  that  had 
stood  out  through  a  rainy  season. 

"Here  I  am,"  he  drawled. 

"You  don't  mean ?"  exclaimed  Peter. 

The  other  man  in  answer  placed  the  package  un 
der  his  arm  on  Peter's  long  Jacobean  table.  The 
motion  was  almost  surreptitious. 

"Yes,  I  did  find  one,"  he  drawled.  "Not  so  far 
away  either." 

He  looked  up  inquiringly  into  DeWolfe's  expres 
sive  face,  now  swept  by  many  emotions  like  puffs 
of  wind  scurrying  across  the  surface  of  water. 

"That's  great !"  Peter  exclaimed.    "It's  great." 

"Oh,  how  kind  of  you  to  say  so,"  Smallwood  said. 
"I  found  this  to-day  and  I  thought  I  would  drop  in 
with  it." 

He  appeared  about  ready  to  lie  down  and  go  to 
sleep. 


256          The  Vanishing  Men 

"Look  here,"  said  Peter.  "You  know  that  was 
mighty  kind,  to  come  up  here — and  all  that.  I'll 
not  forget  it.  Quite  aside  from  the  professional 
obligation." 

Smallwood  raised  his  cold  storage  hand  as  the 
orator  does  when  pretending  that  applause  is  un 
deserved.  The  gesture  also  appeared  to  give  Peter 
permission  to  inspect  the  prize.  Off  came  the  string 
and  off  the  wrapping  paper.  Without  a  glance  at  the 
binding  or  title  Peter  flapped  over  the  pages.  Thirty, 
thirty-one,  two,  three,  four,  five.  Thirty-six! 
Thirty-seven ! 

"All  here!"  exclaimed  DeWolfe  looking  up,  but 
as  if  even  the  pallor  of  Smallwood  had  faded  out 
completely,  the  book  collector's  counselor  had  gone; 
he  had  closed  the  door  noiselessly  as  if  the  paleness 
of  him  not  only  was  for  the  sight  but  for  the  sense 
of  hearing  as  well. 

Peter  pushed  the  third  copy  of  the  rare  volume 
upon  which  he  had  put  his  hands  under  the  arc  of 
the  bronze  lamp. 

"The  way  presents  no  obstacles  to  progress  save 
the  sand  which  is  loose  for  the  feet  of  horses," 


The  Vanishing  Men          257 

Father  Carlos,  the  Jesuit  explorer,  had  written. 
"This  region  of  fine  sand  blown  by  winds  from  the 
Mesa  begins  at  the  valley  that  we  have  called  the 
Dry  Cup  and  by  me  is  so  marked  upon  the  drawing. 
Thence  it  runneth  straight  north  for  a  distance  of 
one  hundred  and  five.  Here  was  found  a  vast 
mound,  some  of  our  party  saying  below  a  great  rock 
was  to  be  found.  The  course  from  this  mound  is 
Northwest;  one  we  have  followed  by  great  good 
fortune  like  a  miracle,  there  being  only  impassable 
clefts  in  the  plain  to  the  right  and  to  the  left  and 
only  one  entrance  into  the  Great  Cleft,  where  is  the 
ruins  of  the  City — part  upon  the  level  ground  and 
part  upon  the  southern  wall  of  the  Mesa." 

Peter  turned  to  the  map  drawn  so  quaintly  by 
the  painstaking  priest  nearly  two  centuries  ago,  "lest 
others  unguided  by  the  hand  of  God  become  lost." 

At  the  end  of  twenty  minutes  of  study  DeWolfe 
stood  erect  and  drew  in  a  deep  breath.  These  pages 
then  were  those  which  Parmalee  had  sought  and 
found,  the  same  as  those  which  he  had  torn  out  of 
the  book ;  they  had  been  associated  with  some  strange 
call.  Was  the  call  to  that  region  or  was  the  call 


258          The  Vanishing  Men 

something  that  followed  his  search  for  this  quaint 
old  volume  and  its  possession  ? 

To  Peter  it  appeared  now  that  one  more  piece  of 
material  was  needed  to  fill  the  pattern.  He  had  been 
reluctant  to  seek  this  piece  but  now  there  was  too 
much  confirmation  to  allow  anything  to  stand  in  the 
way. 

He  could  not  wait ;  he  took  his  hat.  The  evening 
was  now  filled  with  moonlight,  so  clear,  upon  white 
cloud  banks  on  a  purple  velvet  sky,  that  it  invited  all 
to  walk  leisurely  under  a  spell  of  silvery  calm  that 
even  transformed  the  rectangular  prisms  of  the  city 
and  the  deep  streets  between.  Peter  knew  nothing 
of  the  moon ;  he  pursued  one  end,  blind  to  all  else. 

After  hurrying  on  foot  for  two  blocks  he  suc 
ceeded  in  stopping  an  empty  taxicab  that  was  clat 
tering  southward  on  the  Avenue. 

"Take  me  there,"  he  said  to  the  driver,  putting  a 
card  in  his  hand. 

The  car  turned  about  as  if  it  had  forgotten  some 
thing  uptown  and  after  ten  blocks  on  the  asphalt, 
swung  through  a  cross  street  to  the  car  tracks  upon 
which  it  purred  like  a  brush  on  velvet  until  it  turned 


The  Vanishing  Men          259 

around  a  hospital  on  a  corner  and  found  a  block  of 
old-fashioned  brown-stone  houses. 

Up  the  long  steps  of  one  of  them,  Peter  climbed, 
looking  for  a  doctor's  sign,  and  finding  it  there  he 
rang  the  bell. 

The  man  he  had  come  to  see  met  him  in  a  typical 
doctor's  office  with  its  mingled  and  vague  impres 
sions  of  milky  glass  slabs,  nickel  instrument  trays, 
the  vicious  appearance  of  a  harmless  nose  and  throat 
apparatus,  books  bound  in  dark  red,  scattered  medi 
cal  journals  folded  twice  lengthwise,  the  sound  of 
water  dripping  into  a  washbowl  behind  a  white  door 
and  the  faint  smells  of  ether  and  aristol  powder. 

Peter  gave  no  inspection  to  the  man  who  re 
ceived  him ;  he  began  abruptly  by  stating  his  name. 

The  professional  man,  acting  from  habit,  nodded, 
put  on  his  glasses,  took  out  a  card-case  and  said  in 
a  carefully  nurtured  tone  of  sympathy : 

"What's  the  matter?" 

"Nothing  is  the  matter,"  replied  DeWolfe,  "I'm 
not  ill.  I  took  a  chance  on  finding  you  on  Sunday 
evening.  I  know  nothing  of  your  office  hours.  Ap 
parently  I'm  lucky." 


260          The  Vanishing  Men 

"Possibly." 

"I  came  to  consult  you  in  your  other  capacity." 

The  other  man  got  up :  Peter  could  now  see  that 
he  was  a  tall  man  who  had  neglected  to  shave  that 
morning.  He  guessed  that  the  practice  of  this  physi-  • 
cian  did  not  flourish,  but  he  sensed  at  once  the  vanity 
of  the  man  the  moment  his  second  field  of  skill  had 
been  mentioned. 

"Yes,  I  do  a  little  of  that,  too,"  the  doctor  said 
with  fraudulent  modesty. 

"I  should  say  so,"  replied  Peter.  "Who  do  you 
suppose  sent  me  here?" 

"One  of  many  lawyers,  perhaps." 

"The  district  attorney." 

The  doctor  was  plainly  pleased.  He  said,  "Well, 
handwriting  has  been  my  hobby,  Mr.  De Wolfe,  for 
nearly  twenty-two  years.  It  began  curiously  enough 
by  a  triviality — an  attempt  to  read  character  through 
penmanship;  it  has  ended  in  a  scientific  inquiry,  the 
development  of  method,  a  system  of  rhythm  meas 
urements.  Scarcely  a  day  goes  by  that  I  am  not 
consulted  by  the  prosecuting  authorities  in  many 


The  Vanishing  Men          261 

cities.  I  testified  in  London  in  the  famous  Speere 
murder  case." 

"I  was  told,"  said  Peter,  "I  was  told  that  you 
were  in  advance  of  any  other  man  in  America  with 
perhaps  one  exception.  I  came  to  you  for  that  rea 
son.  I  came  for  an  opinion.  For  that  opinion  I 
will  gladly  pay  the  fee  you  ask,  but  I  want  to  say  to 
you  that  the  result  of  your  opinion  will  have  the 
gravest  bearing  upon  the  lives  of  at  least  two  per 
sons." 

"I  do  not  give  opinions,"  the  other  said  severely, 
"I  give  facts.  I  guess  at  nothing.  My  reports  are 
not  speculations ;  they  are  statements." 

Peter  ejaculated  one  word:  "Exactly!"  He  was 
nervous  and  he  could  not  conceal  it. 

"Well?"  said  the  doctor. 

From  his  memoranda  book  DeWolfe  took  out  two 
pieces  of  paper.  One  of  them  was  that  with  the 
symbol  of  the  feathered  serpent  and  the  two  words 
"This  Sign"  which  once  had  been  in  the  possession 
of  Jim  Hennepin;  the  other  was  the  check  drawn 
by  Compton  Parmalee  to  the  order  of  his  wife, 
Brena  Selcoss  Parmalee,  which  she  had  indorsed. 


262          The  Vanishing  Men 

He  placed  this  indorsement  up  and  not  down  as  he 
put  the  two  pieces  of  paper  side  by  side  upon  the 
table. 

"Huh!"  said  the  doctor,  bending  over  them. 

Peter  looked  up  at  him  sharply. 

"That,"  said  the  doctor,  putting  a  square-ended 
fore-finger  upon  the  words  "The  Sign." 

"What?"  asked  Peter. 

"It  is  an  excellent  example  of  an  attempt  to  dis 
guise  penmanship." 

DeWolfe  felt  it  necessary  to  contract  his  muscles 
to  hold  in  an  exclamation  that  had  tried  to  leap 
from  him. 

"That  is  not  the  problem/'  said  he. 

"What  is  it?" 

"The  problem  is  whether  the  same  hand  wrote 
the  words  on  these  two  pieces  of  paper.  Did  they?" 

"Did  they?"  repeated  the  doctor  scornfully.  "Did 
you  expect  an  answer  to  that — at  once — in  a  minute  ? 
Upon  the  specimens  you  have  brought?  My  stars! 
Man!  There  are  only  two  words  on  this  piece." 

"I  thought  it  would  not  require  much  time " 

"Much  time!"  exclaimed  the  doctor.     "Well,  it 


The  Vanishing  Men          263 

wouldn't  require  much  time.  It  requires  measure 
ments,  it  requires  the  microscope  to  pick  out  the  arcs. 
That  is  all.  I  could  get  at  it  to-morrow  morning 
and  in  a  few  hours " 

"To-night,"  said  Peter  firmly.  "I  know  that  this 
sounds  unreasonable.  Look  here.  It  is  worth  a 
thousand  dollars  for  me  to  know  to-night." 

The  doctor  swallowed. 

"You  want  a  yes  or  no  answer?" 

"And  I  want  you  to  telephone  me.  No  matter 
what  hour,  I  shall  be  waiting.  Here  is  my  number. 
No  matter  what  hour.  You  understand.  A  thousand 
dollars." 

The  other  swallowed  again. 

"It  isn't  worth  a  thousand  dollars." 

"It  is  to  me,"  said  Peter  earnestly. 

At  half  past  four  in  the  morning  when  Peter  was 
staring  out  at  the  first  color  in  the  Eastern  sky, 
filled  with  strange  chill  of  a  sleepless  night,  his  tele 
phone  rang  at  last. 

He  had  his  answer 


264          The  Vanishing  Men 

At  about  half  past  four  in  the  afternoon  five  days 
later  Brena  Selcoss  walked  into  the  office  of  Colby 
Pennington.  She  had  come  directly  from  the  pier 
on  the  North  River.  Her  face  was  white,  her 
sensitive  lips  moved  uneasily  as  if  seeking  to  sup 
press  emotions  of  their  own.  Pennington  was  moved 
by  her  presence. 

"I  am  a  friend  of  Mr.  DeWolfe's,"  she  said.  "I 
have  sent  a  wireless  addressed  to  him  here.  I  have 
been  on  the  sea  for  eleven  days." 

Pennington  held  up  the  undelivered  envelope. 

"Are  you  Miss  Selcoss?"  he  asked.  "Well,  Peter 
DeWolfe  sent  you  a  cablegram — something  about 
advising  you  to  delay  your  coming.  You  had 
started.  Too  bad.  Just  now  Mr.  DeWolfe  is  out 
of  town." 

"Out  of  town?" 

"Why,  yes.  He  went  a  few  days  ago.  He  had 
something  to  investigate.  We  rather  expected  to 
hear  from  him.  He  went  off  in  a  hurry — some 
hurry  and  flurry.  I  believe  he  had  received  some 
kind  of  message." 

Pennington  stopped. 


The  Vanishing  Men          265 

"For  God's  sake  what's  the  matter?" 

Brena  Selcoss,  leaning  forward  in  her  chair,  had 

thrown  her  arms  upon  his  desk  and  in  the  curve  of 

one  elbow  she  had  buried  her  face. 

For  a  moment  she  appeared  as  lifeless  as  if  she 

had  been  stnck  a  crashing  blow  upon  the  head. 


XVII 

BRENA  SELCOSS  raised  her  head  from  Colby  Pen- 
nington's  desk  and  stared  at  Peter's  lawyer  with 
an  expression  of  terror  in  her  parted  lips,  in  her 
eyes,  in  her  white  hands,  held  out  as  if  to  ward 
away  a  hideous  idea. 

"You  let  him  go!"  she  exclaimed  in  a  breaking 
shaken  voice. 

"Let  him  go?"  asked  the  astounded  Colby.  "Why 
shouldn't  he  go?  Is  there  any  reason 

It  was  evident  to  Brena  that  this  man  had  not  been 
in  Peter's  confidence ;  he  could  not  know  that  a  call 
like  this  had  come  to  the  other  two  men  and  that 
Peter  might  be  the  third  to  go.  She  interrupted 
him  with  a  gesture  of  impatience,  saying,  "He  left 
no  word — no  address — nothing  with  which  to  trace 
him?" 

"Not  with  me." 

Leaning  forward  he  pressed  a  pearl  button  on 

266 


The  Vanishing  Men          267 

his  desk,  then  seized  a  cigar,  nipped  the  end  off  with 
his  large  white  teeth,  looked  again  at  Brena,  lovely 
in  spite  of  her  grief  and  terror,  and  threw  it  back 
into  the  box.  Usually  Pennington  was  the  master 
of  any  meeting  with  a  stranger,  but  now  something 
of  that  immortal  personality  which  was  hers,  some 
thing  in  her  bearing,  something  in  her  eyes,  some 
thing  in  that  calm  of  distant  mountains  that  she  had 
regained,  held  Colby  silent  until  the  door  of  his  office 
opened  and  the  chief  clerk  stepped  in  from  the  cork 
composition  flooring  outside  onto  the  noiseless 
padded  green  carpeting  inside. 

"Fred." 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Did  Mr.  DeWolfe  say  where  he  was  going — did 
he  leave  any  word  with  us?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"What?" 

"Why,  if  I'm  not  mistaken,  Mr.  Pennington,  he 
said  that  he  was  going  to  New  Orleans,  Fort  Worth, 
and  a  place  called  Kremlin  Wells,  Texas.  He  was 
to  be  there Excuse  me." 

The  chief  clerk  picked  up  from  the  desk  the  bronze 


268          The  Vanishing  Men 

framed  calendar  and  moved  his  pencil  on  it.  He 
said,  "He  was  to  be  there  on  the  24th,  but  gave  no 
address  there.  The  twenty-fourth  is  four  days  from 
now." 

"Kremlin  Wells,  Texas?  I  never  heard  of  such  a 
place,"  said  Pennington  scowling  after  the  manner 
of  one  who  dislikes  any  fact  not  within  the  swing 
of  his  own  radius. 

"Nor  had  I.  I  looked  it  up.  Not  in  the  geography. 
But  it's  in  the  railroad  guide — a  way  station,  prob 
ably  with  a  water  tank,  on  the  Texas  Central  and 
New  Mexico — on  the  desert  near  the  border  between 
the  two  states,  Mr.  Pennington.  That  was  all  that 
he  said.  He  left  some  papers  to  put  in  our  safe  and 
asked  me  to  open  them  and  attend  to  them  if  he 
was  not  back  in  three  weeks." 

"Thank  you,"  said  Pennington.  That's  all, 
Fred." 

"Wait!" 

Brena  had  spoken  in  a  low  tone,  but  with  that 
authority  sometimes  heard  in  her  voice. 

The  chief  clerk  stopped  as  if  her  word  had  been 
a  bullet  in  his  lungs. 


The  Vanishing  Men          269 

"Will  you  help  me?"  she  said  to  Peter's  lawyer. 
"I  assure  you  that  he  would  wish  it." 

Colby  looked  at  her  as  one  would  look  at  a  new 
model  of  some  automobile;  at  last  he  nodded. 

"I  want  to  know  the  first  train  leaving  New  York 
for  St.  Louis  and  Texas,"  she  said.  "I  want  some 
one  to  go  for  a  ticket  and  reservations  to  Kremlin 
Wells  or  the  nearest  point.  I  want  a  taxicab.  I 
want  you  to  do  everything  in  your  power  to  get  me 
to  Kremlin  Wells  before  the  twenty- fourth.  It  must 
be  done!" 

Pennington  stared  at  her. 

"Very  unusual,"  he  muttered.  "But  I  said  we'd 
do  it,  Miss  Selcoss." 

Partly  because  of  the  assistance  of  his  office  force, 
Brena  was  on  her  way  to  St.  Louis,  without  even 
hand  baggage,  but  within  an  hour;  partly  because 
of  it  she  was  on  a  train  that  rolled  into  Dallas 
through  the  railroad  yards  with  the  shabby  wooden 
settlements,  seen  again  from  her  berth  through  the 
slit  of  window  beneath  the  curtain  as  she  raised  her 
weight  on  one  elbow.  It  had  not  changed  com 
pletely  since  she  had  seen  it  on  her  return  after  Jim 


270          The  Vanishing  Men 

Hennepin  had  disappeared.  This  morning  began 
the  23rd  of  the  month;  she  had  the  sense  of  racing 
to  Kremlin  Wells  in  a  contest  with  death. 

At  the  final  junction  point  of  her  long  journey, 
tired,  nerve-wracked  by  unremitting  heat  of  night 
and  day  and  by  the  strain  of  suspense,  she  found 
it  necessary  to  wait  under  a  train  shed,  where  in 
the  waiting  room  or  on  the  platform  the  midday 
humidity  created  a  smothering  steam  filled  with  the 
gases  belched  from  locomotive  stacks  and  the  ear- 
smashing  explosions  from  engine  exhausts  and  the 
impact  of  car  couplings.  The  train  for  the  West 
was  three  hours  late.  She  could  not  leave  the  sta 
tion;  she  walked  back  and  forth,  her  weary  eyes 
held  open  wide  by  will,  her  jaw  firm.  And  dogging 
every  step  she  took  was  the  fear  that  she  would  be 
too  late,  that  when  daylight  came  on  the  twenty- 
fourth  she  would  not  yet  be  at  her  destination. 

The  conductor  on  the  Westbound  Mail  was  not 
of  the  same  mind.  Beautiful  young  women  travel 
ing  alone  do  not  alight  every  day  in  "holes  in  the 
desert"  as  he  called  the  Wells;  he  considered  it  less 
desirable  to  set  her  down  sometime  in  the  dark  hour 


The  Vanishing  Men          271 

between  three  and  four.  He  said  the  place  consisted 
of  a  siding,  a  water  tank,  a  general  store,  five 
houses,  two  saloons  where  roulette  wheels  were  go 
ing  during  the  sheep  herder's  season,  an  adobe  ruin 
and  a  hotel  with  three  rooms  above  a  bar. 

"I  am  sure  it  will  be  all  right,"  said  Brena.  "But 
even  if  it  were  not  I  would  have  to  leave  this  train 
there." 

At  about  three  the  porter  woke  her.  There  were 
ten  minutes  for  dressing,  and  then  she  heard  the 
whine  of  the  brakes,  and  with  muddy,  sleep  thick 
ened  senses,  with  the  ache  of  stiff  bones  and  muscles 
and  nerves  after  the  heat,  the  inadequate  sleep  and 
the  strain,  she  felt  out  from  the  lower  step  with  one 
foot  into  the  bottomless  depths  of  blackness  for  the 
boards  of  the  platform. 

When  the  soft  night  breeze  that  flowed  in  a  steady 
stream  from  the  Southwest  had  blown  the  daze 
away  as  if  it  were  a  dust  that  had  settled  on  her, 
the  train  had  been  swallowed  in  the  dark. 

She  could  hear  the  splash  of  water  leaking  from 
the  bottom  of  the  railroad  tank  and  occasionally 
the  heat  lightning  on  the  horizon  covered  the  desert 


272          The  Vanishing  Men 

toward  the  South  with  the  white  flare  of  a  photog 
rapher's  flashlight  powder,  disclosing  the  vast  ex 
panse  broken  by  black  patches  of  desert  vegetation. 
But  her  attention  was  now  held  by  a  dim  swinging 
lantern  that  came  toward  her  out  of  the  black  plush 
of  the  dark,  as  if  it  came  with  volition  and  move 
ment  of  its  own. 

When  this  light  came  close  to  her,  she  felt  an  im 
pulse  to  leap  back  into  the  dark  as  one  who  is 
desperate  might  leap  into  the  depths  of  black  waters ; 
when  the  light  was  raised  toward  her  face  so  that 
its  possessor  might  see  her,  she  wished  that  she  had 
fled. 

The  face  on  the  other  side  of  the  light  was  the 
essence  of  brutality — the  black  pupils  in  bloodshot 
eyes,  the  sun-baked  skin  drawn  taut  over  immense 
protruding  cheek  bones,  the  thin  wrinkled  upper  lip 
over  a  full  red  drooping  under  lip,  the  broad,  wide 
nostrils,  the  thick  gleaming  muscular  neck  of  the 
half-breed  Mexican  and  Indian. 

Brena  closed  her  fingers  under  cover  of  the  dark 
and  made  the  pressure  of  nails  in  her  own  palm 
summon  her  will  to  put  her  face  nearer  his  and  to 


The  Vanishing  Men          273 

speak  before  he  could  speak,  so  that  she  might  escape 
from  all  manner  of  being  on  the  defensive. 

She  said  in  a  firm  voice,  "I  came  to  find  some 
one." 

The  other  grunted  incredulously. 

"He  came  here  within  a  day  or  two." 

The  Mexican  raised  one  dark  hand  and  pulled 
the  long  lobe  of  one  ear ;  his  expression  was  crafty. 
He  said,  "Maybe  so,  quien  sabe?" 

"At  the  hotel,"  she  suggested. 

The  man  with  the  lantern  raised  it  again  to  look 
at  her;  he  was  silent,  and  then  suddenly  he  grinned. 

"Oh,  at  hotel,  eh?  Ha!  I  know  heem.  Certain. 
At  the  hotel.  He  come  by  big  automobile." 

"Peter  DeWolfe." 

The  other  shook  his  head ;  he  did  not  know.  He 
said  in  a  soothing,  coddling  voice,  "S'all  ri',  Missy. 
You  come,  eh  ?"  He  beckoned  with  a  finger. 

Brena  nodded  and  followed  him  as  he  walked  on 
before,  the  lantern  swinging  at  his  knees,  the 
shadows  of  his  short  bowed  legs  scissoring  on  the 
gravel  and  the  non-committal  dark  beyond  in  every 


274          The  Vanishing  Men 

direction  squirming  and  alive  with  black  maggots 
of  fear. 

Suddenly  the  lantern  illumined  an  entrance  cut 
in  a  high  adobe  wall.  The  man,  turning  around, 
said  in  his  petting  voice.  "Come."  Brena  stepped 
through  into  an  enclosure  without  roof;  the  stars  of 
the  sky  shone  down  with  their  little  white  needles 
of  light.  The  lantern,  however,  now  threw  its  light 
upon  a  little  two-story  wooden  building  within  the 
old  walls.  This  structure  was  dark  below  except 
for  the  lantern's  light  flung  from  the  glass ;  its  faint 
two  squares  of  windows  above  were  black  on  either 
side  of  a  doorway  reached  by  narrow  rickety  wooden 
stairs  built  on  the  exterior  of  the  house. 

"Up,"  commanded  the  Mexican  with  his  hand  on 
the  rail. 

Brena  hesitated. 

"I  take  you  to  heem." 

She  began  to  climb,  gripping  the  hand  polished 
rail  to  steady  her  nerves  by  the  force  of  her  own 
arm  muscles. 

"In!  This  my  house.  I  keep  for  Mister  Glaub. 
In!" 


The  Vanishing  Men          275 

She  passed  by  him  as  he  flattened  himself  against 
the  door  jamb. 

Four  closed  doors,  unpainted  and  covered  with 
penciled  signatures,  dates,  arithmetic,  and  scrawled 
faces  and  verses,  almost  filled  the  walls  of  the  nar 
row  seven  feet  of  square  hall.  With  a  grunt,  like 
a  pig's,  the  Mexican  opened  one  of  these  doors  and 
plucked  at  Brena's  elbow. 

"Look!    What  I  say?    This  heem?" 

The  lantern's  circle  of  light  rose  and  widened  as 
he  held  it  higher  until  it  covered  a  cot  on  which  a. 
wraking  sleeper  was  pushing  himself  up  on  one  arm 
and  reaching  under  a  pillow  with  the  other  hand. 

"A  lady,"  the  Mexican  said,  and  putting  the 
lantern  on  the  bare  boards,  he  slid  out  and  closed  the 
door. 

The  man  on  the  cot  sprang  up,  raised  the  lantern, 
and  at  the  end  of  a  high  exclamation  he  gasped  for 
another  breath  and  ejaculated,  "Brena!" 

"Yes,  Peter.    Thank  God,  Peter,  I  came  in  time." 

"Time — time  for  what?  I'm  all  right,  dear.  I 
cabled  you  to  wait." 

"I'd  started,  Peter.    I  didn't  get  it." 


276          The  Vanishing  Men 

"They  told  you  in  New  York?" 

"Yes,  Peter,  they  said  you'd  had  a  call." 

"I  didn't  say  so,  dear.  I  said  I  had  business 
here." 

"I  don't  care — you  forget.  You  are  the  third — • 
I  couldn't  stand  it,  Peter.  It  was  you — that's  dif 
ferent." 

"You're  tired  out."  He  held  the  lantern  higher 
again. 

"No,  I'm  not,  Peter,"  she  said,  with  a  brisk  un 
convincing  lie.  "I  want  you  to  be  glad  I  came." 

He  dropped  the  lantern ;  it  went  out  He  put  his 
arms  around  her  and  bent  her  head  close  to  his  shoul 
der  as  he  patted  her  hair  with  the  open  palm  of  his 
hand.  He  said,  "Glad?  Me?  Glad?  Brena!  I 
can't  say  it,  dear.  The  cup  runs  over  at  the  brim !" 

"I've  been  in  mortal  fear,  Peter,"  she  whispered 
and  shivered  in  his  arms.  "I  thought  I  had  sent  you 
away  to  your  end — the  thing  that  took  the  others." 

"No,"  said  he. 

"Can  you  tell,  Peter?" 

"I  can't  tell — sure.     I  can  guess.     I  guess  I'm 


The  Vanishing  Men          277 

going  to  fix  everything.  If  not,  there's  something 
too  big — too  ghastly " 

"But  if  you  never  came  back  to  me — if  any 
thing "  She  stopped.  "Why  Peter,  I  flung  my 
self  down  sometimes.  I  prayed  to  be  forgiven  for 
ever  having  spoken  to  you.  I  begged  relief  from 
the  hideous  idea  that  I  had  let  you  start  at  all." 

"Look  here,"  he  said  severely.  "Did  you  send 
me  that  warning — to  the  steamer?" 

She  was  silent. 

"Answer." 

"Yes.    I  thought  I  must  stop  you,  dear." 

"Bad  business,"  he  said.  "Look  here,  Brena. 
For  the  first  time  in  my  life  I've  been  figuring  what 
a  real  partnership  really  means.  And  it  can't  exist 
without  perfect  unbroken  truth — playing  the  game, 
not  separately,  but  together — all  the  time — an  un 
broken  record." 

She  said,  "I  know.  There  isn't  much  to  say.  My 
fear.  My  conscience.  And  it  was  you  who  were 
going  to  take  the  risk.  Not  anybody  else,  Peter — 
and  I  loved  you.  I  took  the  paper  from  a  package 
from  the  chemist's  shop.  I  wrote." 


278          The  Vanishing  Men 

"It  won't  do,"  he  said  harshly.  "It  is  a  bad  spot 
on  the  fruit." 

For  a  long  time  she  sat  on  the  edge  of  his  cot 
without  a  word.  At  last,  "Peter." 

"Yes." 

"Tell  me,  Peter.  There  must  have  been  times 
when  you  wondered  about  me — doubted  me — ques 
tioned  me.  Did  you  keep  faith?" 

He  waited,  but  his  answer  was  clear.  It  was  not 
only  an  answer  to  her  question;  in  his  voice  there 
was  more — an  understanding  of  the  truth  that  right 
and  wrong  are  not  readily  divided  with  a  high  im 
passable  wall  between  them.  There  is  a  teetering, 
and  that  which  counts  is  the  spirit  of  the  game,  that 
leads  one  to  put  weight  most  often  on  the  right  end. 
All  this  he  said  to  her  in  the  one  word :  "No." 

After  a  moment  her  hand  came  through  the  dark 
into  his. 

"I  think  we  are  all  right,  Peter,"  she  said.  "If 
we  can  ever  have  each  other,  dear — forever — I  think 
we  could " 

"Do  what?" 

"Work  out  something  pretty  fine." 


The  Vanishing  Men          279 

"We  will,"  he  said.  "I'm  almost  at  the  point 
where  I  score,  Brena.  I've  brought  a  high-powered 
car  here.  Two  hundred  odd  miles  into  this  hell  of 
desert.  And  to-morrow.  I  go  to-morrow." 

He  struck  a  match  and  relit  the  lantern. 

"Tell  me,  Peter,"  she  said,  brushing  the  red-gold 
hair  back  from  her  forehead. 

"I  did  tell  you.  I  said  I  had  a  theory — a  theory 
about  where  they  went — Hennepin  first — and 
Parmalee.  If  I  am  not  right,  heaven  help  us!  I've 
not  been  afraid  yet — not  in  my  real  self.  If  I'm 
right  I'll  laugh  at  myself  for  toting  a  gun  around 
and  for  a  lot  of  fool  ideas  I've  had.  But  if  I'm 
wrong  now,  I'd  be  afraid.  I'm  no  coward,  but  I'd 
squirm  with  fear!" 

Her  eyes  were  full  of  a  troubled  expression. 

"But  you  don't  tell  me,  Peter." 

"I  can't." 

"Why  not?" 

"Because  if  I  was  wrong  it  would  always  appear 
to  you  that  I  had  been  the  inventor  of  injustice.  Let 
me  test  your  faith  in  me,  Brena,  Give  me  three  days 
more." 


280          The  Vanishing  Men 

"Yes,  but  when  you  ride  off  into  the  desert — to 
danger,  you  said,  provided  you  were  wrong — I'm 
going  too." 

"You  can't." 

"Yes,  I  am  going  with  you,  Peter.** 

"It  might  be  too  hideous." 

"I  am  going." 

The  strange  authority  with  which  she  sometimes 
spoke  was  now  in  her  voice  and  in  her  eyes ;  it  was 
as  if  she  were  speaking,  not  out  of  herself  alone, 
but  were  one  who  voiced  a  decree  of  those  who 
had  willed  an  inexorable  end. 

"Let  me  show  you  then  where  we  are  going,"  he 
said  with  his  lips  pressed  together.  "Let  me  show 
you  a  map.  Let  me  tell  you  how  we  shall  have  to 
steer  our  way  over  a  trailless  waste  by  compass 
as  if  we  were  at  sea!  It's  a  country  of  terrible  dis 
tances  and  heat  and  thirst.  If  the  car  breaks  down 
they'd  never  hear  of  us." 

"We'd  be  out  there  for  years,"  she  said  in  the 
voice  of  one  who  in  a  great  happiness  feels  sleep 
pulling  down  the  eyelids,  drawing  its  mists  across 
the  mind.  "We'd  have  our  hands — like  this — to- 


The  Vanishing  Men          281 

gather.  But  very  bony,  I  suppose.  I'd  rather — do 
that,  Peter — than — not  have — each  other " 

He  picked  her  up  in  his  arms.  He  felt  her  limp 
weight  pulling  at  his  shoulders.  He  heard  her 
whispering,  "I'm  not  ill,  Peter.  I'm  just  tired.  And 
I  don't  have  to  pretend  with  you,  do  I?"  He  felt 
her  warm  breath. 

He  put  her  down  at  full  length  on  the  cot  and 
sitting  on  the  floor  beside  her  he  moved  his  finger 
tips  across  her  white  forehead.  Her  profile  of 
features,  of  body,  of  drapery,  made  him  think  of 
the  queens  and  saints  carved  in  marble  on  the  tops 
of  sarcophagi  in  ancient  abbeys;  lying  in  this  sordid 
little  room,  her  face  turned  toward  the  smoky  ceil 
ing,  nevertheless  she  had  their  calm,  their  sugges 
tion  of  belonging  to  great  emotions,  a  season  of 
great  deeds  and  to  some  grand  continuity.  Brena 
had  been  carved  by  a  great  sculptor,  and  the  limp 
hand  that  still  rested  in  sleep  upon  his  bare  neck  was 
warm  with  the  promise  of  living  expectancies. 


XVIII 

AFTER  night  had  begun  to  creep  in  again  across 
the  desert  from  the  East,  with  a  flow  like  melted 
tar,  suddenly  that  ooze  was  split  in  the  middle  by 
the  great  arc  of  the  moon's  top  coming  over  the 
horizon  like  the  top  of  a  bald  head  of  one  who  pulls 
himself  over  a  wall.  The  heat  of  the  day  yielded 
suddenly  to  the  patient  Southeast  wind  whose  flow 
was  as  changeless  as  that  of  some  gentle  river. 

Brena,  who  had  slept  long  and  restfully  in  spite 
of  the  stinging  dry  heat,  had  awakened  before  the 
sun  had  gone  down  to  find  Peter  was  attending  to 
the  last  details  of  equipping  the  high-powered  car 
that  he  had  bought  in  El  Paso.  It  was  below  the 
window  in  the  old  courtyard  with  the  crumbling 
adobe  wall. 

"Hello,"  he  had  said,  looking  up.  "You  just 
missed  seeing  the  population  of  this  town.  The 
entire  ten  were  here.  They  don't  know  we're  going 
to  strike  into  the  desert  instead  of  going  eastward." 

282 


The  Vanishing  Men          283 

He  had  held  up  his  fingers  to  count  on  them. 
"We're  all  provisioned  now — from  the  General 
Store — gasoline  cans,  water  in  demijohns,  matches, 
canned  beans  and  other  things,  a  bottle  of  olives, 
guaranteed  very  old,  and  one  paper  napkin.  I  say 
— why  do  you  ever  do  your  hair  up  at  all?  It's 
rather  wonderful,  falling  all  around  like  that." 

"I  didn't  take  it  down." 

"No,  I  did.  I  ran  it  through  my  fingers  like  a 
miser  with  his  gold — and  his  untarnished  copper 
threads,  if  a  miser  has  them  too.  Why  not  braid 
it?  We're  going  where  there  are  no  fashions, 
Brena." 

"To-day?" 

"To-night.  There'll  be  a  white  moon  as  big  as 
a  plate  for  hours.  We'll  make  a  hundred  miles  at 
least  through  the  depression  that  runs  along  the 
bed  of  some  prehistoric  torrent  to  the  Northwest. 
Thanks  to  old  Father  Carlos,  the  hard-headed 
Jesuit,  it's  on  the  map.  Easy  to  follow." 

When  the  purple  crepe  of  evening  had  been 
spread  over  the  baking  sands  and  the  stars  had 
been  set  out  in  their  infinite  careless  pattern  in  the 


284          The  Vanishing  Men 

high  desert  sky,  the  car,  with  opened  muffler,  turned 
her  nose  out  of  the  trail  that  followed  the  line  of 
the  railroad  and  began  to  kick  the  sand  behind  as 
if  she  were  a  hound.  It  was  as  if  she  were  leaving 
forever  the  sight  and  memory  of  mankind. 

This  country  is  without  mercy  to  living  things. 
After  thirty  miles  of  hard  pulling  through  the  bare 
loose-surfaced  plain,  tossed  gently  about  as  if  they 
were  riding  in  a  motorboat  over  the  long  rollers  of 
the  sea,  they  saw  before  them  on  the  crest  of  a  sand 
wave  a  running  pack  of  coyotes,  who  came  up  sud 
denly,  black  against  the  moonlight  like  dog  fish 
lifted  into  sight  on  a  wave.  But  after  that  all 
vegetation  and  even  the  cacti  which  stood  like 
trained  seals,  their  flappers  held  out  as  if  ready  to 
begin  a  dance,  became  sparse,  and  the  emptiness  was 
that  of  the  frontier  of  death  itself. 

Peter  turned  to  look  at  Brena.  Her  face, 
illumined  by  the  moon,  was  lifted  a  little ;  with  the 
hair  blown  back  by  the  hot  wind,  her  eyes  glistened 
like  those  of  one  who  rides  toward  battle  in  a  calm 
spirit.  She  felt,  perhaps,  his  gaze,  and,  turning, 
smiled.  She  wondered  why  he  had  been  unwilling 


The  Vanishing  Men          285 

to  tell  her  why  they  went,  what  he  sought,  the  facts 
he  had  found. 

"Will  you  tell  me — afterward?"  she  asked. 

"Yes — if  I  win,"  he  answered.  "I  will  tell  you 
then.  Before  that  I've  no  particular  right  to  do  it 
— not  till  I'm  sure.  The  thing  is  too  tremendous!" 

She  pulled  back  the  silk  sleeves  from  her  round 
arms  that  in  the  pale  moonlight  were  those  of  an 
ancient  Grecian  marble.  She  folded  them  and,  as 
they  drove  on,  she  fixed  her  dark  eyes  again  upon 
the  North  with  the  same  calm,  the  same  suggestion 
of  being  the  possessor  of  a  spirit  as  eternal  as  that 
of  the  sea. 

When  the  moon  had  reached  the  bottom  of  the 
bowl  of  the  sky,  DeWolfe  looked  again  at  his 
speedometer. 

"Did  you  notice  that  our  searchlight  no  longer 
picks  up  little  insects  and  turns  them  into  flashes  of 
silver?"  he  asked. 

"Yes." 

He  stopped  the  car  to  fill  the  radiator. 

"We  are  coming  into  the  most  arid  land  in  the 
world,  where  no  rain  falls  and  there  is  no  dew.  It 


286          The  Vanishing  Men 

is  the  country  of  eternal  stillness.  There  is  no  life ; 
not  even  the  insects  exist  here  There  is  no  mo 
tion.  There  is  no  sound.  Listen !" 

Brena  looked  about  at  the  great  flat  disk  of  the 
desert  as  she  stood  with  her  hand  on  Peter's  shoul 
der  ;  it  was  like  a  world  of  hardened  concrete,  with 
out  flexibility,  without  a  motion.  She  listened  and 
heard  only  her  heart  and  the  throb  of  silence  that 
comes  only  in  places  of  utter  stillness. 

"I'm  glad  I'm  with  you,  Peter,"  she  said.  "There 
is  a  threat  here,  isn't  there?" 

He  nodded.  "We've  been  seventy-five  miles.  To 
a  man  on  foot  without  water  that  would  be  death 
— a  horrible  death  with  the  sand  dragging  at  the 
feet — just  like  the  flies  one  sees  trying  to  pull  their 
legs  along  fly  paper,  with  the  heat  burning  all  mois 
ture  out  of  the  body,  with  the  silence  and  the  still 
ness  inviting  him  to  madness,  and  his  aching  limbs 
gradually  turning  his  footpath  around  and  around 
in  smaller  circles  to  a  center  of  death." 

They  plowed  on,  saying  little.  Brena  felt  the  in 
fection  of  Peter's  tensity ;  at  times  it  caused  her  to 
grip  the  edges  of  the  leather  cushion  beneath  her. 


The  Vanishing  Men          287 

The  ride  became  like  a  nightmare  with  the  eternal 
desert  slipping  behind,  and  ever  coming  forth  from 
the  horizon  in  front  like  an  endless  belt  on  which 
the  wheels  beneath  them  rolled  madly  without 
progress.  The  heat  was  like  the  heat  in  a  dream, 
sprayed  in  a  needle  shower  into  their  faces  as  the 
car  rocked  on.  The  stars,  once  white  and  cool, 
became  red  hot — a  million  little  knife  points  of 
spiteful  light.  The  ears  were  tired  of  the  song  of 
the  motor  and  the  unceasing  swish  of  the  sand  un 
der  the  mud  guards — a  noise  that  suggested  a  drill 
boring  endlessly  and  scattering  its  fine  debris.  The 
desert  was  a  petrified  sea  yielding  brackish,  sulphur 
ous  odors  to  the  dry  and  aching  nostrils.  And 
Brena's  thoughts  became  giblets  tossed  up  in  a  hot 
stew  in  the  cauldron  of  anxiety,  pieces  of  memory 
arising  to  the  bubbling  surface  and  whirling  about 
among  doubts  and  fears,  hopes  and  prayers. 

At  the  end  of  a  hundred  miles  dawn  began  to 
come  in  the  brilliant  colors  of  silken  veils  of  rain 
bow  diversity  shaken  out  from  the  East  With 
startling  suddenness  the  air  of  the  desert  became 
the  tint  of  heliotrope.  The  dark  sky  split  into  great 


288          The  Vanishing  Men 

cracks  where  jagged  peaks  of  the  red  glow  had 
climbed  and  then  with  a  clang  the  yellow  rays  of 
day  came  over  the  horizon  like  long  golden  spears 
of  a  charging  host  held  low  above  the  sands. 

Peter  had  driven  his  car  over  the  great  flat  disk, 
scarred  with  irregularity,  but  nevertheless  like  a 
talking  machine  record  with  its  tiny  impressions. 
The  hours  had  called  for  endurance  of  smarting 
eyes  that  had  stared  so  long  for  gullies  or  chasms, 
and  of  aching  arm  muscles  that  had  held  the  twists 
and  tugs  of  the  front  wheels.  He  allowed  the  car  to 
come  to  a  stop  and  shut  off  the  engine. 

"Both  of  us  need  a  rest  and  water,"  he  said  to 
Brena.  "And  you  need  breakfast." 

She  did  not  talk  to  him  as  he  fixed  the  car,  nor 
when,  having  looked  back  along  the  slight  cut  of  the 
old  prehistoric  torrent  bed  now  filled  almost  to  its 
old  banks  with  drifting  sands,  he  squatted  over  a 
map,  measuring  and  consulting  a  pocket  compass. 
His  anxiety  was  evident. 

They  went  forward  again,  however,  under  the 
full  light  of  day  into  a  trackless  waste  where  there 
was  not  even  a  depression  to  guide  them  and  where 


The  Vanishing  Men          289 

Brena,  holding  the  compass  in  her  hands,  gave  di 
rections  to  him  as  he  moved  the  wheel.  At  the  end 
of  twenty  miles  more  Brena  uttered  an  exclama 
tion. 

"What  is  that  on  the  desert  ?"  she  asked.  "Peter, 
look!  There!  To  the  left." 

A  little  point  of  light  shone  on  the  sand  as  if  a 
diamond  had  caught  the  sunlight  and  had  extracted 
from  it  a  bit  of  its  essence  to  outshine  the  sun  him 
self.  Peter,  steering  toward  it,  looked  down  over 
the  edge  of  the  car  as  one  might  look  over  the  edge 
of  a  boat  at  some  piece  of  strange  flotsam  sighted 
in  midocean.  This  was  strange  flotsam  indeed. 
Peter  having  stopped  the  car  again  to  pick  it  up, 
showed  it  to  Brena;  it  was  an  empty  vial  of  white 
glass. 

Peter  sprang  out  of  the  car,  and,  walking  about 
in  widening  circles,  searched  the  ground.  He  ap 
peared  excited.  Time  and  time  again  he  looked 
at  the  little  glass  vial. 

"Some  one  has  been  here,"  said  Brena.  "I'm 
just  Irish  enough  to  say  that,  Peter." 


290          The  Vanishing  Men 

"Hush,"  he  said.  "I've  seen  more  than  you  have 
seen.  It  means  everything  to  us!" 

He  bent  over  her  as  if  he  were  going  to  take 
her  in  his  arms,  but  he  tossed  his  head  at  some 
thought  that  had  restrained  him,  and  took  the 
wheel  once  more. 

At  nine  o'clock  they  came  within  sight  of  a  great 
mound  on  the  desert;  it  appeared  as  if  it  were  the 
fat  round  back  of  some  gigantic  creature  that  had 
buried  itself  for  a  sleep  of  centuries  in  a  sand 
wallow  of  vast  area. 

"There  it  is!"  exclaimed  DeWolfe.  "Look, 
Brena.  Look  to  the  West.  Somewhere  up  there 
is  the  Llano  Estacado — the  Staked  Plain — as  the 
Spanish  explorers  called  it.  And  there's  the  haze 
on  the  horizon — the  haze  that  the  Jesuit  mission 
aries  told  about.  It  comes  from  the  colder  air  of 
the  Mescalero  Ridge !" 

"And  it  means  that  we  have  found  our  way?" 

"Yes,  found  our  way.  There's  ninety  miles 
more." 

"Where  are  we  going?" 

"To  the  oldest  city,  Brena,  in  America,     To  a 


The  Vanishing  Men          291 

city  at  the  base  of  a  high  cliff,  built  of  clay  which 
crumbled  centuries  ago  into  dust.  The  wall  is  left 
perhaps  as  it  was  two  centuries  ago.  A  dry  well. 
A  carving  upon  the  rock.  A  windless  place  oc 
cupied  only  by  horned  toads  and  perhaps  one  other 
misshapen  thing." 

At  three  o'clock  they  had  stopped  again  to  eat; 
they  were  able  to  see  in  the  West  the  tops  of  distant 
mountains  marked  by  a  deeper,  duller  blue  than 
the  thin  cloudless  rotunda  of  the  sky.  An  hour 
later  they  came  within  sight  of  the  tableland  upon 
which  these  mountains  were  set  like  piles  ofl^food 
upon  a  giant's  doorstep.  And  this  step  up — this 
mesa — with  its  precipitous  edge,  marked  the  end  of 
the  desert. 

"The  cliffs  that  rise  to  that  table  land  are  im 
passable,"  said  Peter,  with  his  eyes  alight  and  his 
voice  filled  with  excitement.  "The  city  was  built 
below  their  protection  around  a  great  well  and 
walled  in  front  with  thick  fortifications.  We  shall 
see  them,  Brena!" 

When  at  last  they  had  come  to  these  crumbling 
walls  with  the  great  gaping  mouth  of  an  ancient 


292          The  Vanishing  Men 

gateway,  the  sim  was  still  sending  down  its  beat 
in  throbbing  layers  over  the  desert.  It  slanted  down 
from  the  West  following  the  angle  of  declivity  of 
the  wall  of  rock  behind  the  ruin  that  mounted  up 
in  ragged  overhanging  crags  of  red  and  brown. 
Upon  the  base  of  this  rock,  rudely  smoothed  and 
carved,  was  the  symbol  of  the  feathered  serpent. 

Brena  clutched  Peter's  forearm. 

"It  did  have  a  meaning  then?"  she  said  with  halt 
ing  syllables. 

"A  terrible  meaning,  Brena,"  he  said  with  awe. 

Amidst  the  gigantic  proportions  of  desert,  sky 
and  cliff,  this  figure  of  the  Mayan  god — a  symbol 
brought  from  the  lands  of  the  Central  Americas 
by  a  craven  tribe  fleeing  from  its  enemies — had 
looked  down  with  its  heathen  eyes  upon  the  growth 
of  a  city  around  an  oasis,  around  a  flowing  giant 
spring.  It  had  seen  perhaps  in  the  coming  and 
going  of  generations  within  that  fortified  pueblo, 
strange  rites,  barbaric  human  sacrifice,  the  march 
of  a  little  pomp  and  power,  moving  funerals,  the 
dance  of  naked  priests  with  painted  yellow  bodies, 
the  endless  stream  of  laborers  bending  under  their 


The  Vanishing  Men          293 

loads  of  water  carried  from  the  well  to  irrigation 
ditches,  the  harvest,  the  miracles  of  water.  But 
perhaps  it  had  seen  too  the  day  when  a  subterranean 
shift  had  driven  the  underground  water  course 
away,  and  in  a  night  drained  out  the  life-maintain 
ing  supply  of  five  thousand  panic-stricken  praying 
men  and  women  and  their  lamenting  priests.  Per 
haps,  if  tradition  were  right,  it  knew  where  the 
treasures  of  that  city  had  been  hid  away.  It  had 
seen  the  fine  sand  blown  from  the  edge  of  the  mesa 
far  above  hang  in  the  air  and  come  drifting  down 
through  the  centuries  to  cover  the  crumbling  ruins 
within  an  enclosure  where  no  longer  a  living  thing 
moved  and  no  breeze,  however  slight,  ever  disturbed 
the  veil  of  dust  that  was  spread  upon  the  level  space 
within  the  walls. 

"A  place  where  no  wind  ever  blows,"  said  Peter. 
"Father  Carlos  over  two  centuries  ago  wrote  that 
down.  A  lifeless  place." 

"You  are  not  going  into  it  alone,"  said  Brena 
firmly.  "I  will  go  with  you." 

"It  isn't  right,  Brena.  I  do  not  know  what  we 
shall  find." 


294          The  Vanishing  Men 

He  looked  at  the  opening  in  the  high  wall  as  if 
it  were  the  maw  of  Destiny  opened  to  belch  forth 
upon  them  a  sentence. 

"Tell  me,  Peter — are  there  dangers  there?  Do 
you  know?" 

"I  only  guess,"  he  answered.  "I  think,  there  are 
none.  I  think,  Brena,  that  beyond  that  wall  there 
is  freedom  for  us — life  for  us — a  message  for  us." 

"I  must  go  with  you." 

He  nodded. 

At  the  entrance  he  stopped,  gazing  down  at  the 
ground — the  film,  the  blanket  of  fine  dust.  He 
uttered  an  exclamation. 

"What  do  you  see,  Peter?" 

"I  see  a  record  in  the  sand/* 

"What  record?" 

"We  shall  see  more,"  he  said  grimly.    "Come." 

In  the  center  of  the  enclosure,  containing  sev 
eral  acres  of  the  almost  level  site  of  the  crumbled 
and  vanished  pueblo  of  clay  and  rubble,  there  was 
one  monument  of  permanence;  it  was  the  great  well- 
curb  of  mighty  slabs  hewn  from  the  rock  of  the 
cliffs.  A  part  of  it  had  fallen  into  the  hole,  block- 


The  Vanishing  Men          295 

ing  its  mouth,  but  its  contour  still  stood  up  out  of 
the  film  of  gray-yellow  dust  as  if  it  were  possessed 
of  some  grim  determination  to  compete  with  the 
feathered  serpent,  the  Kuk-ul-can,  carved  on  the 
rocky  face  of  the  mesa  above,  to  become,  after 
the  passing  of  endless  centuries,  the  sole  survivor 
of  the  Pueblo  Mescalero.  It  appeared  to  be  a 
thing  possessed  of  the  patience  of  endless  days,  and 
endless  ages,  though  no  human  eyes  would  look 
upon  it  again  and  though  year  in  and  year  out  the 
gigantic  cliff,  the  desert  and  the  cloudless  sky  were 
motionless  and  mute. 

Toward  this  memorial  of  tragedy,  of  death,  of 
decay,  of  the  insignificance  of  time,  of  the  inconse 
quence  of  an  age  of  man,  Brena  and  Peter,  like 
two  creautres  of  a  moment  of  life,  walked  with 
solemn,  awed  faces. 

"Look!"  said  Peter  suddenly.  "Have  you  your 
nerve?  Look!" 

He  pointed  to  a  pile  of  charred  bones  lying  close 
to  the  well.  Among  them  was  a  piece  of  human 
skull  blackened  as  if  by  fire. 


296          The  Vanishing  Men 

"Wait,"  Peter  commanded. 

He  went  forward,  bent  over  the  ghastly  pile, 
kicked  the  sand  that  surrounded  it,  and,  stooping 
down,  gathered  a  number  of  objects  into  the  cup 
of  his  hand. 

"This  was  no  prehistoric  man,"  he  said  solemnly. 
"See!  The  eyelets  and  the  nails  of  shoes.  The 
leather  long  ago  vanished.  Here  are  two  mother 
of  pearl  buttons,  a  pocket  knife,  coins,  the  snap  on 
a  wallet.  This  man  lost  his  life,  Brena,  many  years 
ago" 

She  tried  to  speak,  wetting  her  dry  lips  with  the 
tip  of  her  tongue. 

"There  are  things  of  gold  too,"  said  Peter. 
"Keep  your  nerve,  dear.  Look  at  this!" 

He  held  out  in  his  trembling  fingers  a  signet 
ring  with  an  H  deeply  engraved  upon  it. 

"That!"  exclaimed  Brena  with  horror.  "It  was 
his! — Jim  Hennepin's.  This  is — him?" 

"Yes." 

Brena  moved  toward  the  pile  of  bones  half  con 
sumed  by  fire;  then  she  stopped  and  looked  away. 


The  Vanishing  Men          297 

"He  was  killed,"  she  said.  "He  was  shot  or 
stabbed." 

"No,"  replied  Peter  grimly.  "It  was  worse  'than 
that — more  ghastly.  He  was  killed.  But  it  was 
not  by  a  human  hand." 


XIX 

"BRENA,  I  want  you  to  stand  here  by  this  old 
well  without  walking  away  from  it  a  moment," 
said  Peter,  taking  her  by  the  shoulders  and  look 
ing  squarely  into  her  dark  eyes.  "I'm  going  to 
leave  you  alone  a  minute.  It's  not  pleasant.  I  want 
you  to  do  it  just  the  same." 

"Where  are  you  going?" 

"Outside  the  wall  again.  I've  seen  something 
there  that  you  did  not  see." 

Brena  shivered. 

"Don't  be  afraid,  dear,"  he  said.  "We  have  had 
— both  of  us — the  lesson  of  futile  fear.  Once  we 
told  each  other  that  fear  was  a  crime — a  terrible 
waste.  We  are  on  the  verge  of  learning  how  ter 
rible  a  waste  it  can  be." 

She  put  her  hands  in  his;  with  a  smile  she  said, 
"You  see,  Peter,  I  am  in  the  dark,  dear.  But  just 
the  same  I'll  do  as  you  tell  me." 

As  he  walked  away  from  her,  his  head  bent  for- 
208 


The  Vanishing  Men          299 

ward  as  if  meditating,  she  leaned  back  against  the 
hot,  flat  face  of  one  of  the  huge  stone  blocks  of  the 
well  curb,  following  him  with  her  steady  gaze.  He 
disappeared  outside  the  old  wall,  and  as  he  vanished, 
so  vanished  all  that  attached  her  to  the  living  world. 
There  was  no  sound,  no  motion  within  the  range 
of  the  senses;  the  place  of  death  was  still.  The 
sun  still  hanging  in  the  western  sky  threw  purple 
shadows  of  the  cliff  that  were  like  shadows  destined 
to  lie  immovable  to  eternity  upon  the  motionless 
sand.  Northers  might  blow  across  the  mesa  above, 
the  Southeast  Gulf  winds  might  roll  up  from  the 
south  over  the  desert;  but  here  no  breath  of  air 
stirred.  Not  even  a  horned  toad,  like  a  piece  of 
dried  and  shriveled  cactus  skin,  drew  with  its 
thorny  little  tail  any  fine  trail  upon  the  dust.  Brena 
felt  as  if  she  too  had  become  incapable  of  movement 
and  of  sound;  she  had  a  sense  of  being  transformed 
into  stone — an  adamantine  statue  of  a  woman, 
carved  from  rock,  waiting  beside  the  waterless  well 
under  the  beating  sun,  the  cloudless  infinity  of  sky, 
the  cliff,  until  the  crack  of  doom. 

Suddenly  into  this  world  of  motionless  fixity, 


30O          The  Vanishing  Men 

there  fell  upon  the  yellow-gray  dust  a  swiftly  mov 
ing  shadow,  twisting,  turning,  dancing  over  the 
ground,  sweeping  around  her  in  great  circles.  It 
was  like  a  black  phantom  prancing  over  the  sands, 
thrusting  at  her,  charging,  retreating,  beckoning, 
feinting,  making  ready  to  spring.  To  look  upward 
to  see  from  what  thing  this  shadow  fell  required 
a  summoning  of  her  courage;  but  one  glance  told. 

From  the  table  lands  above  a  lonely  buzzard  had 
come  swooping  down  on  wide  black  wings,  dipping 
and  turning,  with  one  eye  cocked  down,  as  if  some 
time  before  he  had  picked  bones  in  this  enclosure 
and  had  returned  to  the  scene  of  gruesome  feasts. 
Black,  ill-omened,  carrion  creature  that  he  was, 
Brena  felt  glad  that  he  had  come — a  thing  of  life 
and  motion — into  this  place  of  vast  dimensions 
filled  by  the  silences  and  rigidity  of  death.  She 
watched  the  magnificent  grace  and  power  of  his 
flight  until  Peter's  voice  broke  the  silence  again, 
and  flapping  toward  the  west  the  bird  began  to 
circle  up  whence  he  had  come. 

"Brena,"  said  Peter,  who  came  to  her  with  an 
expression  drawn  as  if  with  some  stress  within. 


The  Vanishing  Men          301 

"Yes?" 

i 

"Sit  down  with  me  here  where  these  blocks  cast 
a  shadow,  dear.  I  will  show  you  what  I  have  found 
— a  thing  like  the  writing  of  a  giant  finger  of 
justice — here  in  the  desert.  But  first  I  want  to  tell 
you  a  tale,  Brena — true,  revolting  and  terrible." 

"Tell  me,"  she  said,  sitting  with  her  elbows  on 
her  knees. 

"It  is  of  surprising  brevity,  Brena,"  he  asserted. 
"Its  simplicity  is  the  thing  that  makes  ridiculous 
the  many  things  I  expected,  all  the  nightmares  of 
the  unknown.  I  told  you,  dear,  that  I  was  no 
Master  Mind — no  Great  Analyst  in  capital  letters. 
I  was  right.  I  stumbled  onto  the  trail.  I  used  my 
head.  That's  all." 

He  stopped  to  think. 

"And  yet  the  simplicity  is  hideous!"  he  said. 

Brena  glanced  toward  all  that  remained  of  Jim 
Hennepin  of  Virginia — the  blackened  fleshless  relics 
of  his  existence. 

"He  deserved  it,  perhaps,"  said  Peter  pointing. 
"He  tried  to  cash  in  his  knowledge." 

"You  told  me  last  night  of  the  superstition  of 


302          The  Vanishing  Men 

buried  treasure  here,"  she  said.  "You  mean 
that?" 

"No,  not  exactly,"  said  Peter.  "I  picked  up  the 
trail  in  the  house  where  Parmalee  took  you.  Two 
old  books;  and  maps  of  this  country  and  of  this 
place  were  missing  from  both.  One  Parmalee  took 
when  he  went  away.  The  other  ?  Well,  I  began  to 
wonder  about  the  other." 

"You  thought  it  must  have  been  used — before." 

"Yes.  It  had  been  used  and  probably  destroyed. 
It  was  used  by  one  man  to  toll  another  to  his  death." 

Brena  leaned  forward. 

"I  began  to  be  sure,  Brena,  when  I  found  that 
expert  knowledge  pronounced  that  the  writing  on 
a  check  made  out  by  the  one  man  who  led  the  other 
to  his  death  here  was  written  by  the  same  hand  that, 
with  an  attempt  to  disguise,  had  written  the  words, 
"This  Sign,"  on  the  scrap  of  paper  Jim  Hennepin 
left  with  you  and  that  you  gave  me.  I'd  better  tell 
you  that  when  I  first  took  that  check  it  was  be 
cause  your  indorsement  was  on  it.  I  wasn't  sure, 
Brena — of  anybody." 


The  Vanishing  Men          303 

"I  understand,"  she  said.  "I  understand.  And 
the  scrap  of  paper  was  a  part  of  the  bait  ?" 

Peter  raised  his  hand  as  if  to  say  that  he  wished 
to  go  on  in  his  own  way.  "It  was  chance  too  that 
led  me  to  the  motive  for  ridding  the  world  of 
Hennepin.  That  miserable  man  had  become  a 
menace.  He  knew  too  much.  He  knew  of  a  long 
series  of  embezzlements  from  a  certain  estate  in 
Texas.  A  capitalist  had  bought  vast  quantities  of 
something — on  speculation — and  his  agent  after  his 
death  deceived  the  executors  as  to  the  extent  of  his 
holdings.  I  have  had  a  clue  from  an  old  account 
book  sifted  to  the  bottom." 

"And  Jim  Hennepin  knew?" 

"Knew  and  began  a  merciless  blackmail,  threat 
ening  ruin.  I  can  see  him  now,  insatiable,  hungry, 
losing  in  speculations,  asking  for  more,  hounding  a 
man  who  was  balancing  between  success  and  fail 
ure  and  always  hinting  at  bankruptcy  and  the 
penitentiary." 

Peter  went  on.  He  told  of  the  probability  that 
Compton  Parmalee,  the  hounded  man,  a  physical 
coward,  but  resourceful  and  ingenious,  had  <:ome 


304          The  Vanishing  Men 

upon  an  old  volume  describing  this  lost  city  of  the 
desert.  There  were  traditions  of  vast  wealth  hidden 
there.  Parmalee  had  pretended  to  the  possession  of 
knowledge  confirming  it.  He  had  shown  old  letters, 
the  scrap  of  paper  with  the  Kuk-ul-can  symbol.  He 
wanted  to  take  the  blackmailer  to  a  place  from  which 
he  would  never  come  back. 

"To  kill  him?"  asked  Brena. 

"No,"  replied  Peter.  "He  hadn't  the  courage. 
He  feared  that.  He  feared  the  work.  He  feared 
the  result.  He  had  a  better  way." 

"And  how?"  she  asked. 

"It  is  all  there — here  in  the  sand — a  record,"  he 
said.  "A  ghastly  record.  Seven  years  have  gone, 
but  in  this  deep  fine  dust,  Brena,  there  still  remains 
the  story." 

He  paused ;  he  lit  a  cigarette ;  went  on.  He  said, 
"There  around  the  entrance  are  the  marks  of  horses' 
hoof-prints — almost  lost — but  still  readable — three 
horses,  two  saddled  and  one  carrying  the  packs. 
They  came  in  two  horses  abreast,  and  the  pack 
horse  led  behind.  Two  men  in  the  saddles.  Night 


The  Vanishing  Men          305 

came  on.  One  man  slept.  The  other  crept  to  the 
animals  and  he  rode  away." 

"Rode  away?    Left  Jim  Hennepin  here?" 

"Yes,  beyond  hope — no  horse,  no  water." 

"How  do  you  know?" 

"Because,  Brena,  when  the  three  horses  went  out 
into  the  desert  their  footprints  are  in  single  file — 
one  man  led  the  other  two.  I  will  show  you.  It 
is  in  the  sand — a  record  and  a  good  guess." 

He  was  silent  and  he  broke  his  silence  with  a 
cry. 

"I  can  see  him — Hennepin — awakening,  realiz 
ing,  seeing  far  away  the  little  galloping  specks  in 
the  pale  moonlight  with  the  treacherous  man  upon 
the  leader — a  tiny  bobbing  figure.  I  can  hear  the 
curses  hurled  after  them.  And  he — the  one  left — 
alone  under  the  moon,  alone  under  the  sun,  alone 
under  the  moon  again — without  a  drop — rushing 
out  into  the  desert,  only  to  be  driven  back  to  the 
shade  after  weary  marches  dragging  through  the 
sand,  hunting  among  the  rocks,  crazed  with  thirst, 
gone  mad,  cursing,  blittering  mad — his  tongue  black 
— the  end — perhaps  a  thought  of  you — the  cur!" 


306         The  Vanishing  Men 

He  looked  up  at  Brena;  he  set  his  jaw. 

"I'm  sorry,"  he  said.  "But  I  can  see  it  so  clearly 
— the  terrible  retribution  in  this  place  of  silence. 
His  screams  echoing  back  from  the  rocks,  his  curses 
rising  into  this  thin  pale  blue  sky  and  the  vultures 
swinging  overhead." 

"Seven  years  ago,"  she  whispered. 

"Yes,  seven  years.  And  four  years  of  torturing 
fear — that  was  the  pay  of  the  one  who  rode  away." 

"Compton  Parmalee?" 

She  said  it  without  any  external  sign  of  emotion. 

"Yes,"  said  Peter.  "He  had  succeeded  in  wiping 
out  one  blackmailer.  But  another,  more  terrible, 
sprang  up — fear." 

"He  feared  discovery?" 

"Yes,  and  something  else.  He  could  never  feel 
sure  that  Hennepin  was  dead.  That  was  the  curse 
upon  him — the  fear  the  murderer  feels,  twisting 
and  alternating  with  the  fear  of  a  physical  coward 
who  ever  hears  those  threats,  those  curses,  those 
promises  of  vengeance  coming  across  the  moonlit 
desert  as  he  rode  away  that  night." 

She  shuddered. 


The  Vanishing  Men          307 

"Yes,"  said  Peter.  "That  was  why  Parmalee 
destroyed  the  map.  He  had  probably  ridden  back 
to  some  other  settlement  after  shooting  Hennepin's 
horse  in  some  gully  and  he  wanted  to  wipe  out  all 
evidence.  For  months  he  resisted  the  temptation — 
that  burned  and  scorched  inside — to  see  you." 

"To  find  out  whether  I  had  been  told  anytning 
about  Hennepin's  destination?  And  then  when  he 
wasn't  sure — when  there  was  that  scrap  of  paper 

not  accounted  for !  Peter,  it  is  too  horrible ;  he 

proposed  that  strange  marriage  agreement  in  order 
to  go  away  and  take  me  with  him.  He  was  afraid 
I  might  remember  some  word — give  some  clew." 

"No,"  replied  Peter.  "It  was  that  of  course. 
But  that  was  not  all.  The  spark  of  real  man  that 
you  saw  in  him  was  there,  Brena.  Terror  put  it 
out  at  last,  but  the  real  tragedy  of  Parmalee  was 
that  he  had  that  spark." 

He  waited  for  her  to  look  up  again ;  she  had  been 
staring  down  at  the  yellow-gray  dust. 

"I  suppose  you  can  see,"  he  went  on.  "I  suppose 
you  can  see  now  what  was  in  his  mind.  Two 
pictures.  One  was  the  picture  of  Jim  Hennepin 


308          The  Vanishing  Men 

alive — that  great  muscular  athlete  who  drank  hard, 
who  had  the  false  traditions  of  the  South,  the  love 
of  death  oaths,  the  degenerate  temper,  the  sly 
smiling  ways  of  carrying  a  vengeance  through.  He 
saw  him  escaping  from  the  desert,  Brena — heaven 
knows  how — but  escaping  by  some  desperate  ef 
fort,  some  chance,  some  miracle,  some  way  that 
Parmalee's  brain  could  not  conceive,  but  yet 
couldn't  be  put  out  of  range  of  possibility.  He  saw 
Hennepin  seeking  him.  Yes,  he  saw  it — a  picture — 
a  thousand  haunting  pictures — Hennepin  with  his 
malicious,  desperate,  haunting  eyes  and  his  terrible 
muscles.  He  saw  him  smelling  along  the  trail  for 
his  quarry.  He  saw  him  walking  about  a  quiet  pic 
ture  gallery,  and,  suddenly  seeing  your  portrait  and 
realizing  that  Parmalee  had  taken  you,  turn  red 
with  renewed  wrath  which  would  send  him  out  for 
a  knife." 

"At  last  that  imaginary  Hennepin  became  almost 
a  reality,"  said  Brena.  "He  shot  at  him  once — at 
a  reflection  in  a  piece  of  glass.  He  kept  Paul  be 
cause  Paul  was  a  brute  who  would  fight.  He  was 
afraid  Hennepin  would  send  some  assassin  to  get 


The  Vanishing  Men          309 

employment  as  a  servant.  He  never  knew  when 
Hennepin  might  come — and  kill." 

"But  he  saw  the  other  picture  too.  He  saw  the 
buzzards  hovering  over  what  was  left  of  Hennepin, 
he  saw  a  whitened  skeleton  grinning  up  at  the  sun 
lit  sky  and  at  the  stars,  Brena.  That's  what  he 
saw.  And  some  day  some  one  would  somehow 
come  there.  Perhaps  some  one  had  been  there  al 
ready.  Perhaps  at  the  very  minute  a  prospector, 
dirty  and  unshaved,  or  some  accursed  archeological 
explorer  from  a  university  was  in  that  very  town 
where  they  had  bought  the  horses  and  was  telling 
of  the  skeleton  and  of  finding  the  skeleton  of  the 
riderless  horse  with  the  bit  still  held  between  the 
white  teeth.  He  might  have  that  bit  in  his  pocket. 
Some  one  recognizes  it.  Somehow  the  chain  once 
started  never  ends  until " 

"There  comes  a  hand  upon  the  shoulder,"  said 
Brena,  as  if  in  a  dream,  "and  a  voice  saying,  'We 
have  looked  a  long  time  for  you/  ' 

"Yes.  There  wasn't  one  fear,"  Peter  said,  mark 
ing  two  lines  in  the  sand  with  his  forefinger.  "There 
were  two  fears.  They  fought  each  other  and  their 


3io          The  Vanishing  Men 

battleground  was  Parmalee's  soul.  It  was  trampled 
into  a  wallow  of  terror,  of  questioning,  of  doubt. 
Do  you  know,  Brena,  that  somehow  there  creeps 
into  me  a  great  pity  for  him?" 

"If  he  had  been  able  to  put  his  ringer  upon  some 
button  that  would  have  blown  him  to  bits  he  would 
have  taken  that  way,"  she  said.  "But  he  had  an 
exaggerated  instinct  for  self-preservation.  It  threw 
him  back  from  any  approach  to  suicide." 

Peter,  getting  up,  came  to  her  and  put  his  hand 
upon  her  shoulder  as  if  to  give  her  strength.  She 
had  spoken  with  a  voice  too  evenly  measured  to 
deceive  him  as  to  the  strain  she  felt.  It  had  been  a 
long  pull  for  her,  he  thought.  The  last  steps, 
though  they  might  lead  out  into  the  sunlight  of 
freedom,  were  upon  rough  ground — rough  even  for 
a  man.  He  was  wondering  how  he  could  save  her 
from  pain.  He  wanted  to  have  this  surgery  over, 
and  to  have  it  over  there  was  only  one  way. 

"It  was  inevitable  that  he  would  come  here — in 
the  end,"  he  said.  "He  had  to  see.  He  had  covered 
his  terrors  by  a  cowardly  process  of  trying  to  make 
you  believe  that  some  mystery  that  clung  to  you 


The  Vanishing  Men          311 

was  the  cause  of  them.  He  began  to  fear  disclosure. 
He  feared  that  he  would  allow  you  to  know  in  some 
mad  moment.  He  was  coming  to  the  end  of  his 
rope." 

"Yes,  the  end  of  his  rope." 

"He  had  to  make  the  hideous  pilgrimage  at  last. 
How  could  he  tell  you  where  he  was  going — even 
the  direction?  It  might  lead  to  the  uncovering  of 
his  movements.  And  then  when  at  last  he  had 
made  up  his  mind  to  come,  he  felt  almost  gay — the 
very  promise  of  an  answer  to  which  of  his  two  fears 
he  must  devote  himself  gave  him  a  moment  of 
something  almost  like  gayety.  What  perversion!" 

Peter  stopped  and  looked  up  at  the  ugly  symbol 
of  Kuk-ul-can  carved  on  the  rocks. 

"He  procured  a  copy  of  Father  Carlos'  map  a 
second  time,"  he  said.  "He  had  to  have  it  to  find 
the  way.  After  four  terrible  years  he  revisited  the 
Pueblo  Mescalero,  two  hundred  miles  from  no 
where.  It  called  him  back.  He  had  to  come." 

He  stopped  again,  looking  at  Brena,  whose  palms 
were  pressed  against  her  knees,  whose  face  with  its 
wonderful  profile  was  still  held  uplifted  looking 


312          The  Vanishing  Men 

into  the  vast  distances  of  the  desert,  her  lips  closed, 
her  eyes  unseeing,  like  some  carved  deity  who  had 
been  sitting  thus  for  centuries. 

"He  bought  a  high-powered  car,  Brena,"  said 
Peter.  "And  all  alone  he  came." 

"And  where  is  he  now  ?"  she  cried  out  at  last,  in 
sudden  disclosure  of  her  pain.  "Do  you  know? 
Where  is  he  now?" 

She  looked  searchingly  at  Peter's  sun-bronzed 
face,  where  upon  the  surface  of  youth  lines  of 
strength  had  been  engraved  by  war,  and  lines  of 
tenderness  perhaps  by  a  great  new  understanding 
of  love  and  life. 

"He  is  here  again,"  he  answered.  "He  is  here. 
.  .  .  Do  you  understand?" 


XX 

"I  UNDERSTAND,"  said  Brena. 

"Then  come  with  me,"  Peter  said,  holding  out 
his  hands.  "I  will  show  you  all  that  remains — the 
record — the  story  written  on  the  sand  and  dust. 

He  led  her  again  toward  the  charred  bones;  he 
found  no  resistance  in  her. 

"Look  there,  Brena.  Do  you  see  the  footprints? 
Here  are  yours  and  mine.  But  look  again  on  the 
sand.  There  are  others  too.  A  thin  veil  of  dust  is 
over  them.  They  move  here  and  there ;  they  criss 
cross  and  move  away.  They  are  the  footprints  of 
Compton  Parmalee.  He  has  come  to  stand  gazing 
down  at  the  white  skeleton — white  as  oyster  shells." 

"Blackened,"  she  said. 

"Wait !"  Peter  said.  "There  are  the  spots  where 
he  stood  looking  down.  He  had  his  answer ;  no  liv 
ing  Jim  Hennepin  of  Virginia  would  ever  fill  him 
with  lead.  And  as  he  stood,  Brena,  perhaps  gazing 
down  for  a  long,  long  time — because  his  footsteps 

313 


314          The  Vanishing  Men 

are  lost  in  that  stew  of  impressions — he  was  filled 
with  all  the  concentrated  terror  that  I  suppose  only 
a  murderer  can  know.  He  went  into  a  crazy  wild 
panic  of  fear.  These  bones  were  his — the  grinning 
skull.  They  must  be  hidden." 

"How  do  you  know  all  this?" 

"Because  he  has  moved  toward  this  old  well.  He 
reached  the  stone  well  curb.  He  sprang  up.  Do 
you  see  the  marks?  He  found  the  mouth  choked 
with  massive  blocks.  Nothing  could  be  hidden 
there!  His  track  moved  back." 

"Go  on,"  said  Brena. 

"Now  he  goes  running  out  along  the  walls  search 
ing  for  something.  Look!  Here!  He  ran  out 
along  the  base  of  the  wall  searching." 

"For  what?" 

"For  bits  of  wood — for  anything  that  would 
burn — for  fuel.  He  must  have  a  funeral  pyre.  He 
has  been  crazed  by  fear  again.  But  he  finds  noth^ 
ing,  Brena.  There  is  no  wood  here,  no  paper,  no 
grass.  There's  nothing  but  sand  and  stone.  Let 
him  run  about  till  he  drops.  There  is  no  mercy 
for  him.  Nothing  that  will  burn.  Nothing  within 


The  Vanishing  Men          315 

a  half  a  hundred  miles.  Like  Hennepin,  he  too 
now  screams  and  the  scream  comes  back  from  the 
cliff  with  a  terrible  mockery." 

"But  he  did  find  fuel,  Peter,"  she  said.  "He 
must  have  found  something." 

"Yes,  he  found  something  that  would  do — not 
very  well,  as  we  can  see.  He  had  hoped  for  better 
results  than  he  got.  Come." 

On  the  way  toward  the  gate  of  the  fortification 
walls  Peter  stopped  and  kicked  at  a  blackened  spot 
on  the  sand.  He  said  laconically,  "Their  fire. 
Where  they  ate  their  last  supper  together — the 
vanished  men." 

The  sun  had  dropped  below  the  mountains  above 
the  mesa;  its  needled  fire  had  settled  down  into  a 
hot  layer  of  dull,  sullen  heat.  But  beyond  the  wall 
where  their  car  stood  the  open  desert,  bare,  cruel, 
with  the  heat  waves  running  like  endless  herds  of 
sheep  along  the  quivering  horizon,  was  a  relief  from 
that  strange  spell  of  the  dried  well,  the  ruins,  the 
fine  yellow-gray  dust,  and  the  silence. 

Brena  filled  her  lungs  as  one  does  who  has  come 
from  the  interior  of  a  mortuary. 


316          The  Vanishing  Men 

"Peter,"  she  said. 

"Yes,  dear." 

"I  want  to  tell  you,  Peter,  that  you  need  not 
worn-  about  me.  I  am  all  right.  It  is  necessary 
for  me  to  know.  And  I'm  going  to  know.  Peter, 
without  any  weakening.  We've  come  too  far  for 
that." 

He  took  her  hand, 

"I'm  not  willing  to  let  this  make  a  scar  on  me, 
Peter,"  she  said.  "I've  paid  in  full  before  this.  So 
show  me.  And  then  let's  turn  toward  the  earning 
of  our  ways." 

"Our  way,"  he  insisted,  correcting  her.  "Not 
ways.  The  earning  of  our  way,  together." 

She  shook  her  head  a  little  as  if  some  doubt  had 
stirred  within,  but  they  were  outside  the  wall  now 
and  Peter's  eyes  were  upon  that  which  he  had  seen 
before. 

He  dropped  behind  her  and  turned  her  body  so 
that  she  faced  toward  the  bend  in  the  southern  end 
of  the  fortification  wall. 

"There,*'  said  he.  "You  did  not  see  it  as  we 
drove  in." 


The  Vanishing  Men          317 

Standing  on  the  desert,  like  a  ragged  unkempt 
impropriety,  was  the  ruin  of  a  touring  car.  All 
that  was  left  of  its  top  was  hanging  in  wispy  strips 
on  the  metal  frame,  its  paint  and  varnish  had  al 
most  gone,  the  tires  had  hardened  and  crumbled  on 
the  wheels,  shreds  of  dry  rotted  leather  dangled 
from  the  cushions.  Motionless,  dead,  silent  as  all 
else,  the  car,  as  if  it  were  a  shabby  outcast  thrown 
out  to  die,  appeared  disconsolate,  ready  to  send 
forth  a  wail  of  loneliness  into  the  emptiness.  It  had 
turned  its  back  upon  Pueblo  Mescalero,  as  if  it  had 
wanted  to  go  away  but  could  not  find  the  strength. 

"He  came  in  that,  Peter?"  Brena  asked. 

"Yes." 

"But  never  took  it  away.     Did  he  kill  himself?" 

"No,"  Peter  answered.  "A  great  abstract  justice 
— a  great  equity  from  which  there  was  no  appeal — 
sat  in  trial  of  him  here.  I  tell  you,  Brena.  the  thing 
is  of  magnificent,  awe-inspiring  dignity.  It's  a 
tremendous  thing — an  unforgettable  majesty  of  in 
exorable  dealing  out  of  sentences.  The  place  of  his 
crime  was  the  scene  of  his  trial,  his  conviction  and 


318          The  Vanishing  Men 

sentence.  He  died  as  Hennepin  had  died — of 
thirst." 

Brena  started  to  speak. 

"No,  not  yet,"  Peter  said.  "As  Hennepin  had 
suffered,  so  he  suffered.  More,  perhaps,  because  in 
his  car — just  as  we  have — he  had  a  two  days'  sup 
ply  of  water.  Do  you  see  that  black  thing  out  there 
on  the  desert?  It  is  a  metal  container  for  water. 
He  was  so  crazed  that  he  had  tried  to  drag  it  along 
with  him  on  a  hopeless  journey  through  the  sand. 
When  he  lost  hope  after  many  miles  he  dragged  it 
back,  tapping  its  contents  to  wet  his  cracking  lips 
until  the  last  drop  was  gone.  His  footprints  are  still 
there  wherever  the  sand  is  deep  in  the  bottom  of 
small  depressions." 

"But  the  car?"  she  asked.  "What  happened  to 
the  car?" 

"The  car  was  all  right,"  replied  Peter.  "Come 
this  way.  Don't  go  in  front  of  it.  Look  behind  it 
— the  tracks  it  had  made  from  the  enclosure  en 
trance.  But  here  it  stopped.  Oh,  I  tell  you,  it  is  a 
thing  of  stateliness — as  if  some  great  hand  had 
come  down." 


The  Vanishing  Men          319 

Brena  stared  at  him  in  open-eyed  wonderment. 

"He  was  the  instrument  of  justice — he  himself," 
Peter  went  on.  "A  man  who  would  save  his  life, 
lost  it.  The  madness  of  fear  brought  all  that  he 
had  to  fear — and  more." 

He  paused. 

"Brena,  I  will  tell  you,"  he  said  in  a  hushed, 
awed  voice.  "The  man  was  mad,  irresponsible, 
without  power  to  reason.  He  was  in  a  panic  of 
fear.  He  wanted  to  hide  his  crime  at  any  cost.  He 
had  rilled  his  gasoline  tank  for  the  return  journey. 
Look!" 

Peter  pointed  to  the  hole  in  the  back  of  the  car 
into  which  the  gasoline  is  poured.  The  screw  cap 
had  gone.  A  bent  copper  pipe  still  dangled  out  of 
that  hole. 

"He  wanted  a  hat-full  of  gasoline.  That  was 
the  fuel,  Brena — the  fuel  to  burn  the  remains  of 
Jim  Hennepin." 

He  wet  his  lips. 

"He  used  a  siphon.  This  bent  copper  pipe  taken 
from  his  tool  chest — a  spare  length  of  oil  feed 


32O         The  Vanishing  Men 

pipe!  And  with  that  he  filled  his  hat  and  ran 
back." 

Peter  looked  up  into  the  sky.  He  went  on  quietly. 
"And  the  siphon  ran  on.  He  had  forgotten  it.  It 
ran  on  with  its  little  stream  saturating  the  sand 
until  the  tank  was  empty  and  the  heat  of  the  day 
was  evaporating  the  last  drops  at  the  bottom. 
Parmalee  had  condemned  himself  to  death!  He  had 
lost  the  fuel  he  had  put  in  for  the  return  journey !" 

Brena  pressed  her  lips  tightly  together  and  for 
many  moments  looked  into  the  great  fanlike  spread 
of  the  sunset.  Then  suddenly  she  turned  toward 
the  car  and  took  several  steps. 

"No,"  said  Peter  firmly.     "You  mustn't." 

"I  must  know,  Peter,  beyond  a  shadow  of  a 
doubt." 

"He  is  there — nothing  for  you  to  see,  dear.  He 
must  have  had  the  delusion  at  last  that  he  could 
drive  the  car.  He's  there — at  the  wheel — fallen 
forward.  And  so " 

She  looked  up. 

"And  so — to  be  sure — I  took  the  watch — a  gold 
one — this  one.  Is  it  his?" 


The  Vanishing  Men          321 

He  held  it  out  on  the  palm  of  his  hand. 

"Yes,  it  is— his,  Peter." 

He  looked  down  at  it  a  moment;  then  tossed  it 
into  the  sand  as  one  tosses  aside  a  poisonous 
fungus. 

"Peter." 

"Yes." 

"We  mustn't  let  this  go  with  us  when  we  go — 
following  us  away.  We  must  leave  them  both — 
here." 

She  took  his  hand. 

"I  am  sure.  For  myself  I  can  answer.  I  know 
the  desert  has  served  some  great  Will.  The  book  is 

closed." 

•  •••••• 

They  slept  upon  one  great  square  blanket 
spread  on  the  open  desert  beneath  the  stars  while 
the  pale  moon  moved  on  its  great  silver  arc  across 
the  heavens.  The  Pueblo  Mescalero  was  far  be 
hind;  from  it  they  had  ridden  for  miles  in  awed 
silence.  And  when  they  had  reached  a  stopping 
place  upon  a  rise  of  ground,  neither  had  dared  an 


322         The  Vanishing  Men 

expression.  Aching  with  weariness  they  had  looked 
at  each  other  mutely  and  flung  themselves  down. 

Now  the  second  morning,  like  the  first,  came  over 
the  desert's  edge  with  a  host  of  golden  lances; 
again  the  air  of  the  desert  became  a  haze  of 
luminous  violet  hanging  above  the  red  and  yellow 
sands  and  waiting  for  that  clang  when  the  yellow 
glare  was  flung  forward  again  over  the  plain. 

Brena  awoke,  sat  up,  unbraided  her  hair  and 
tossed  it  loose  with  her  fingers.  Something  within 
her,  that  had  been  growing  with  the  slow  growth 
of  stalwart  long  life,  that  had  suffered  no  blight, 
that  subconsciously  she  had  protected  and  nurtured 
for  an  unseen  end,  that  had  been  made  ready  to 
withstand  assaults  by  tragic  winds,  that  had  lived 
apart  and  immune  from  taint,  was  now  free.  As 
she  threw  out  her  arms  toward  the  sun,  so  now  this 
thing  within  her  for  the  first  time  came  forth  from 
its  depths  to  greet  a  dawn  of  its  own. 

It  was  not  a  thing  asking  for  dramatic  crises  or 
for  summits  of  joy;  it  only  asked  for  the  ultimate 
romance — that  of  the  continuity  of  a  full,  strong, 


The  Vanishing  Men          323 

human  life — the  adventure  of  adventures  into  which 
the  soul  throws  mind  and  body,  thought  and  flesh, 
nerve  and  will.  And  because  she  had  found  her 
mate  in  this  ultimate  romance,  Brena  bent  over  and 
kissed  Peter's  lips. 

He  smiled  in  his  sleep,  and  slowly  his  body  moved 
and  his  eyes  opened. 

"Where  are  we  going,  Peter?"  she  asked. 

"Somewhere  with  you,"  he  said,  sitting  up. 
"Somewhere  with  you.  I  suppose  we'll  have  to  be 
married,  dear  one.  But  I  feel  that  we  were  some 
thing  more  than  that  a  long,  long  time  ago." 

He  turned  toward  the  East  and  the  first  flood  of 
golden  light  illumined  his  face. 

"Do  you  know,  Brena,  that  there  is  something 
not  weighed  by  science  and  the  philosophies,  not 
reckoned  by  governments  nor  laws  nor  customs.  It 
is  something  that  is  ours — some  new-born  thing 
without  material  existence,  some  immortal  spirit 
that  we  have  created — you  and  I — long  ago." 

Brena  moved  her  head  up  and  down  in  silent  as 
sent.  She  sat  with  her  hands  clasped  in  her  lap,  her 


324         The  Vanishing  Men 

dark  eyes  moist,  and  a  calm  smile  upon  her  sensi 
tive,  flexible  lips.  » 

For  now  she  knew  that  he  too  understood  the 
way  to  the  greatest  of  all  the  mysteries. 


THE  END 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000  824  490     7 


